


Patriotic Stranger

by super-heroes-of-middle-earth (plopi99)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Fights, Hydra, Mutant Powers, Protective Steve Rogers, The Russian Mob, a tiny bit of violence and language, memory problems, mutant! reader, steve has feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:23:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plopi99/pseuds/super-heroes-of-middle-earth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day you think you are done with your past, there's an alien invasion, shield collapses and you get dragged into all this by your old friends and maybe even a crush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't summarize anything. I'll tag more later. This fic has also been posted on tumblr, and you can find it on my blog: superheroesofmiddleearth. i look forward to hearing your opinion :D

You woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. That much is clear. You have a terrible headache and you cannot seem to understand why. Sure, you drunk a little last night with Logan, but not that much, or did you? Now that you think of it last night’s pretty much of a blur. Great. All you needed now was a hangover. You reach for your phone on the nightstand. You don’t have any classes to teach today and you really don’t feel like training . You close your eyes after checking the time: 7:30 am. You get a piece of (h/c) hair out of your face when you feel it tickling your nose. Outside your door students start making noises and you throw your hands up in exasperation. Can someone get some rest here? Just when you were going to put a pillow on your ear to block out the noise you hear the professor’s voice in your head.

  
“ _Good morning. Are you up, Y/n_?” you can’t help but groan out loud.

 _“Five more minutes_ ” you say pulling the covers over your head. “ _So mature… are you 12_?” you think. You can hear the professor laugh and you smile. It always happens to you, but he always lets it go.

“ _(Y/n) I am sorry to disturb you on your free day, but I must tend to something else. Would you be so kind to take over my classes for today? I only have two, from 8 to 10 and then you are free. I will make up for it._ “ you hear him saying. He knows you can’t say no to him. Two hours.. that’s not that much.

“ _Sure. It’s really no problem._ ” you say and you yawn, stretching your arms and legs to the point where you think they will break.

  
“ _Great. I will meet you in my office in 15 minutes.”_

“ _I’ll see you then._ ” And you block your mind like turning off a phone. Your mind it’s not a place someone wants to be, even if he knows everything about your not so pretty past.

You get up from the bed with a sigh and your whole body protests. You get a small shiver when some cool air hits your exposed skin. You want to put on something before breakfast, but it seems you are a little behind with laundry. Again you sigh and mumble a “fucking great” under your breath like you used to when you were a teenager. You manage to find a black top with a pair of blue ripped jeans. You only have to put on sneakers and you are ready to go. You look in the mirror in your bathroom. God, you look like hell. You have big black circles under your eyes and your hair is no longer in a ponytail. You tame your (h/l) mess and wash your teeth in a little under 5 minutes. Sun glasses. That is what you need right now, well that and a huge cup of coffee. You leave the mess you call a room and head downstairs.

“ _Ok, so I need to do laundry, clean my room, grade some homework, work on my bike, maybe I can enhance it some more…_ ” you make a to do list in your head while walking. Students give your glasses funny looks and you can hear Logan in the kitchen complaining about a bad headache. You don’t have the time to talk to him about it now. You are already late and you don’t want to upset the professor.

“Good morning! Sorry I am late but waking up was not that easy today” you say with a smile after you enter the office and close the door behind you. Charles only smiles at you, fully aware that you and Logan made a drinking contest last night, a contest you won, mind you. He just gives you some papers and some exercises to give to the kids. You know he doesn’t do that just because you are hungover, but you just thank him from the bottom of your heart nonetheless.

“How are you?” he asks in a soft voice that resembles the one of a worried parent. He is more of a father than anyone in your life ever was.

  
“it’s just a little headache. It’ll pass as soon as it came.” You smile at him.

“I see. And your powers? Have you been training?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at you when you sigh.

“I am fine. I didn’t have an incident in a while. My powers seem to be stabile...” You smile. That wouldn’t be the first time you think this, but this time something makes you think everything will be alright.

“…for now” he finishes your sentence. Your smile falters. You shrug. Maybe he is right. Maybe one day in the near future you will be betrayed by your powers again, maybe it’ll be even worse that the time when the X-Men found you, wounded and sucking on energy like a black hole, at the bridge between death and life, explosion or implosion. You feel a little shiver at the thought of it. You promised yourself you won’t think of it again and it worked out pretty well so far. “There still is the Stark incident. Was that a complete upgrade, as Logan so nicely put it, or that was just the begging?”

 

~time skip until that late afternoon~

 

You enter the kitchen hungry, angry, frustrated and tired as hell. You need to eat something and go for a long ride with your bike. Screw that to do list. You always have next week. You eat a small lunch alone and leave. You stop and tell Scott where you’re going. There is no point in having him yell at you again for disappearing into thin air. You see your motor where you left it two days ago and you hop on. You leave the mansion and head to NY, it’s not that far away and you know a place where you can always clear your mind and get some good coffee, a local coffee shop next to the Stark Tower.

It takes you about one and a half hours to get there and it’s getting darker by the minute. You can see the tower is not lit yet. You order some coffee and a donut. Drinking coffee in the evening may not be a good idea, but you have to grade that homework after all, as much as you and the students want to ignore it, it won’t go away. You are lucky you only teach part time at the school and have a few classes a week. You can’t teach everyone advanced mechanics and physics after all, which means you can’t use your PhD or your training unless you go back to SHIELD, also that is not happening in a million years. And this time you mean it.

You like to mess with the lights sometimes, make them turn on and off on the beat of the music, not all of them, because that wouldn’t be very subtle ( and you are all about subtle miss I-drive-a-fast-motor-and-dress-like-I-am-half-homeless-half-just-got-off-the-catwalk), but one in a far corner. You find it relaxing, the feeling you get when that little energy travels your whole body, feeling everything around you. There is no way to put it into words. It more like a warm and cold feeling at the same time, it’s more or less like feeling the blood flow through your body. It makes you aware of every inch of you. You close your eyes, savoring the coffee and the breeze that gently blows in your hair. It’s a good evening giving the morning you had. You feel someone staring at you and the next thing you see is someone sitting in front of you, smiling, his arms crossed. You smirk.

“Good evening, agent Coulson. Fancy seeing you here.” you say in an English accent, something you picked up during your time in UK. Where the hell haven’t you lived actually?

“Likewise. I have quite missed you . What brings you here?” you can tell he is a bit rushed but that only makes you curious.

  
“The coffee. Just a little me-time. What about you?”

“Business. I am actually going to see Stark. Want to come? I would be happy to talk some more after the meeting.”

  
“I would love to but I should be going back. I have to be up early. Maybe some other time? I would love to hear about the cello girl” you say with a smirk and put some bills on the table.

“Last time I saw you was before Stark got that medal from the senator. It’s been a while (Y/n). I bet you’ll disappear again and who knows when I might need your skill set again”, he says pointing to the flickering lightbulb. You are surprised by this. You asked him never bring this up ever again. You stop the flickering just as the waiter wants to change the bulb.

  
“Coulson…” you hiss.

“I know, I know. I was just saying. That day may come earlier than you would like.” You can see he has a bitter smile and you can’t help but take a piece of paper and write your number on it.

“Let’s just keep this private, shall we? If you are ever up for drinks or the world is ending call me up.” You get up and hug him before turning to your bike. You rush home, wondering what he meant about “earlier than you would like”. You were sure something was up. You just had to figure out what.

As soon as you got home you crashed in your bed. No way you were going to do all that boring grading today. No fucking way.

  
“… just kill me now” you say drifting to sleep fully clothed and with your shoes on. Your phone starts ringing and it startles you. Curse the day you put Metallica as your ringing tone.

“(L/n).” you hope it’s not a prank call from one of the students because they will live without electrical power for days.

  
“Did I wake you up, мед( honey)?” you can’t recognize the voice right away but that little tease in Russian make the identity of the caller utterly obvious.

“What do you want Tash? And how on earth did you get my number? And ..”

“Easy on the questions Sparky.” You cringe at the use of her nickname for you. Is she ever going to let that go? “Care to show at a drop spot tomorrow at 8 am? You have a meeting on the one and only SHIELD helicarrier.” You make her phone shut down. You’re not going anywhere. In a minute your phone rings again.

“That was not nice (Y/n). I thought you were a nice person. Didn’t you have that in your CV?” you could hear her chuckle.

“Fuck off Romanoff. I am extremely tired and I am not in the mood to deal with you or Fury. Speaking of… why did I have to go again? I think you missed that small detail. You also forgot to tell me how you got my number. Wait, actually don’t tell me. It’s probably classified and I’ll end with me getting shot in the heart.” You frown and you can feel Natasha cringe. You know it wasn’t her fault, but that didn’t make you reasonable.

“I didn’t. it’s just… complicated. “ Something was definitely up, but you were no longer a SHIELD agent and you didn’t trust yourself out on the field again, not after the Stark incident. That much energy was not pleasant, and stopping it was even less. You don’t have a death wish, and you are sure that next time something like that will happen there is no way out.

“Natasha, I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

“Barton’s been compromised. He’s off radar and we need your help to find him, and the one that he works for. You won’t be a ground agent, only a consultant on some sensitive matter that we can’t talk over the phone.” You freeze. Compromised? Working for? What did Barton get himself into?

“Let me think about it. I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it. Now if you excuse me, I gotta see a man with some killer anger issues.” She hung up. You turn off your light, get your shoes off and toss them somewhere in your room and stare at the ceiling. “Why thank you Nat. I really didn’t want to sleep tonight.”

The alarm scared the shit out of you. You woke up confused, fully clothed on your bed, tired as fuck and worried. You had to talk with someone. You didn’t even look for some clean clothes. You just left to find the professor.

  
After a long conversation you made your decision. You won’t go unless they fully need you. You take the day off to do all your chores but you get a phone call.

“How fast can you get to NY?” you know it’s Natasha. “There’ll be a jet picking you up. We need you, big time. There is a new development on the case we are working on and we need you, and your powers. I am sorry I have to drag you back into this circus. Get here, and get here fast.” That’s all you hear. Well that and some thunder and a voice saying something about a God in a dress.

“ _What the fuck?_ ”

“Fuck off Natasha.” You run to your room to get dressed. You dress in your uniform from the X-men, but it doesn’t have the X on it . It covers your face and therefore your identity with a mask, the material is electrical conducting. Scott gives you a ride with the jet on his way to pick up the team that left three days ago with Storm. You are in NY in 10 minutes and there is a jet waiting for you. The pilots give your uniform some weird looks, but they don’t say anything. You decide not to put your mask on yet. It doesn’t help if you look like a ninja assassin. You get near the hellicarier in two hours.

Maria Hill waves at you and signs you to follow her inside. She points you to a lab where there are a lot of people fighting each other rather loudly. You can recognize Stark right off the bat because he is the closest to the door, you can see Fury and Natasha there too, but the rest of them are strangers, and you don’t feel that confident going in. Before you get through the door there’s a big explosion and it almost makes you fall off your feet. You put your mask on and you go full mission mode. You bump into Stark.  
“Get out my way.” He says, not acknowledging who you were.

“Stark. It’s me. What happened?“ he just makes a run for it, with a big blond guy pushing him. He was dressed in blue and didn’t seem to be a SHIELD agent, which raised the question, who was he? Fury almost doesn’t recognize you either but he stops, gives you a com.

“Explosion, engine 3. Go there, help them. “ and with that he leaves you. You don’t waste any more time. You have your orders. You run there, putting the ear piece on. you can hear Fury giving orders. You start listening on what Stark says.

“It seems to run on some form of electricity.” You hear a strange voice.

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Stark can’t keep his sarcasm for himself even in life or death situations. This guy…

  
When you arrive you see a big hole where a wall was supposed to be. You can’t see either of them.

“Stark, it Y/n. I’m here. What do I do?”

“Y/n? what? When did they drag you into this? Never mind, we don’t have the time. Get to the control panel. Help Steve” You jump, pretty much just like he did before you. He makes place for you to take a look at the relays.

“Okay, the relays are intact. What’s our next move?” Steve says. He doesn’t look at you, he treats like you didn’t just come out of nowhere dressed like that, with a mask on your face so he could only see your eyes.

“Even if I clear the rotors this thing won't re-engage without a jump. I'm going to have to get in there and push.”

“If that thing gets up to speed, you'll get shredded.”

“That stator control unit can reverse the polarity long enough to disengage maglev and that could...”

“Speak English!” you can feel that Stark just rolled his eyes so hard he could see the inside of his skull.

“I got it. Jump to that red lever there. Pull it when Stark says.” He nods and in a second he’s sitting next to the lever. Next thing you see is him jumping towards you, pushing a grenade off its trajectory.


	2. Chapter 2

You look in disbelief at the blond man sitting next to you.  Getting saved was not something you did. “ _No time for my ego to kick in”_

“Thanks. “ you breath out. You need to keep calm otherwise the norse God and the attackers  will be the least of your problems.

“We need to get rid of them. Can you fight?” he looks at you ready to save you again.

You jump from the platform you were on and punch an agent in the face, hit him in the arm, making his gun fly from his hands. You get him down by surrounding his body with your legs, taking him down with you; he hits his head and passes out and you get up ready to face the other enemy. You avoid a punch from that one and you catch his hand, hitting him in the stomach with your knee, making him lose his footing while you throw him down with minimal effort. You twist his hand in a very painful way until you hear a _“crack”_  and hit him in the nose with your boot, making sure he won’t get up.

“Captain, I was born to fight” you flash a smile, but quickly realize he can’t see it. “ _Dummy”_ you say to yourself but the sound of gunshots soon cover the sound of your own thoughts.

Steve is fast to recover the other gun and start shooting back and covers you so you can get to a safe spot.  He tries to find cover when the other guy is shooting back, but he slips and nearly falls off the hellicarrier.  He is literally hanging on a thread, or a cord.. power cord.

_“It’s worth a shot_ ” you guess. You put a hand on one of the power cord and power up. You avoid bullets and with each step you get closer and closer to the shooter. You kick him in the solar plexus, hit him in just the right place so his hand would go numb and you take his gun away, putting a hand on his chest so you make his heart stop from the electricity. You cringe at the idea you killed someone, but you had no choice _. “The hellicarrier is losing altitude fast_.”

“Stark… it’s time to do your thing.” You practically yell at him, so he can hear you over the noise of the attack.

“I’m doing it… you do yours. Pull the lever.”

“Just a second.” You are a little farther than Steve, but he just got his body on the platform.

“Hit the lever NOW!” Steve pulled down the red lever and stark came in flying a couple of seconds later while you two sat down breathing heavily.  You get up and hope you don’t electrocute anyone.

“Well that was something…” you look at Tony who was ready to come with a snarky comment. He takes his iron man helmet down and raises and eyebrow and opens his mouth, but the voice of Fury shut everyone up.

“Coulson’s down.” It hits you like a bullet. Your heart stops  and you look at Tony who is just as surprised as you are.

“A medical team is on its way to you.”

“They’re here.” Fury pauses. You know it’s not good news if he pauses. “They called it.”

 You shut your eyes. This is not the place to cry or show any sign of emotion. Coulson was a close friend, but as always, your friends die, everyone around you dies.  

“Meet you in the conference room. I need …” you pause. You don’t even know what you need. “A break” ; “ _that’s not a complete lie”_ you think.  You walk around until you get to the infirmary wing where you see Natasha.  She’s talking to Clint and they both seem  devastated to say the least. Natasha lost a friend, the only father figure she had, beat the shit out of her boyfriend and Clint killed innocent people and was under mind control.

You knock on the door and get into the small room looking at the two spies in front of you. Clint wants to hug you but you shake your head and shrug.

“Not yet. I mean I wouldn’t if I were you.”  They smile at you, but it’s not a real smile, it’s more of “I’ve been through hell and back and I get you” kind of smile, it’s forced and it doesn’t do anything to lift the weight of your shoulders.  Death is a heavy weight to carry.  Clint goes to the bathroom.

“I’m really sorry I got you involved into this. This whole thing messed up us.” She looks you in the eyes.  You can see the sadness in hers but there’s nothing you can do about it.

“Don’t apologize Nat. I came back, I chose that. I.. um. “ you stop and your lip is trembling, you take a look at your hands and they’re shaking as well. You get your gloves off and you can clearly see every vein on your hands. You close your eyes and focus to let the energy flow through your body and out. A few moments later the lights are a lot brighter but you are back to normal. Natasha doesn’t say anything all this time. When you feel better you hug her and you are really close to crying but you stop yourself. You know this isn’t finished, that there will be time for crying later. You pull back and blink the tears away.

“Does Barton know? About…” Natasha looks at the  bathroom door.

“Not yet… I’ll tell him later. I don’t think I should make him feel even worse than he already does. “

“Okay, I get it.” You sigh. When did your world became so.. complicated?

Suddenly the doors open and Steve walks in.

“Time to go.”

“Go where?” Natasha seems just as confused you are.

“I'll tell you on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?” at this Barton comes out of the bathroom and tells the captain he knows.

“..suit up.” 

You put you gloves back on and make sure the mask you have it’s in its right place.  You don’t spare a second look when you exit the room, letting Clint get dressed, but oh.. you should have because as soon as you closed the door you went face first into Steve, more like his chest since he is a lot taller than you.

“Fuck. Sorry Captain. You put a hand on his arm so you can get out of his way but he shrugs it like it was burning.

"Did you do that?”

“That what?” _“embarrass myself? oh that’s easy. It’s a natural gift.”_  You almost say that out loud but you just kept still looking at him, raising and eyebrow since that way he could guess your facial expression.

“Electrocute me.”

“Oh my God I’m so sorry. I guess I was a bit startled when I bumped into you. I really didn’t mean it, it’s a reflex. So sorry.” Perfect. You just electrocuted Captain fricking America about two hours after you met him.

“How did you do that? Did Stark invent some special gloves?” he looks so done with Stark and he met him yesterday.

“Um..” you let out a shaky breath trying to find the right words “you see, some people get born with a special gene in their DNA and that gives them special abilities. I am more like an energy sponge, taking it and releasing it when I want or some cases don’t want and I don’t really know the limits of my powers so I suggest you stay away because I really don’t want to hurt you” you say all that in a single breath, speaking so fast you were afraid he didn’t understand anything, but he looks at you with a straight face before nodding once and leaving, brushing his hand with yours for just a nanosecond. “ _what just happened?”_

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Your POV

The fight had been going on for what seemed like ages. You were on the ground, fighting as best as you could. Your ammo was low and you didn’t have any spares left. After the leaves bullet left your gun you throw it away and start looking for a way to gather some power or you’re useless.

You look around for everything that resembles a power cord or a car that wasn’t destroyed in the explosions. A car battery wouldn’t hold for long but it’s better than nothing.  You start running to what seems like an exposed power cord when iron man shoots his repulsor at Steve’s shield, using it as a mirror, killing everything near him. Unfortunately for you, you were just behind an alien and they couldn’t see you.

The beam went right through him and it stopped in you. At first you prepared for the impact, prepared for the pain or for the death, but neither came. Instead everything you felt was the energy flowing through your body and shielding you like a power shield. “ _Well that’s new”_

“Sorry about that Y/n, though I think you kept something from us. Since when can you do that? What even is that?” Stark just left, heading towards another big alien thing flying across town.

“Since now it seems. I had no idea. Charles always told me that I have a wide range of powers but this is new even for me. “ you say, fighting side by side with Natasha.

“This might prove interesting…”

“I feel a little worn out though. I need to power up somehow.”

“Ok, see to that while I am awesome killing aliens. We still have to talk.” You kick an alien in the knee sending it down. “ _Please have a similar anatomy”_   You quickly break his neck thanking God you knew hand to hand combat.  

“But we’ll talk about this after we finish this mess Stark. Get your head in the game.”  You have to scream so he can hear you over all the noise and you are out of breath. “ _Power. NOW”_

Steve and Natasha stopped fighting . The next moment Natasha is thrown by Steve on one of those little ships and you two are left to deal with this mess. Thor just landed next to Steve, sending his hammer towards a group of aliens.

“Thor, do me a favor and electrocute me”

“Lady Y/n…” he was obviously going to refuse but there was no time for that. There is no chance you can keep on like this, you are drained and you can pass out any minute now.

“No time for a speech Thor. Do it now before I change my mind. “

“I do not wish to harm you..” he says looking at you with pleading eyes as to make you, a crazy person, change your mind.

“You won’t, trust me.” “ _Oh this is going to be bad”_

Thor did as you asked him. He summoned the lightning and hit you. Steve stopped and looked at you for a second to make sure you didn’t need any help. You didn’t. You actually never felt better. Well you did, but it was nice being all charged up, feeling every inch of your body come to life. You gave a short thanks and returned to your fighting, taking advantage of your new energy.  

~

You sit on a mountain of destruction looking at the three men and hulk. You just fought against aliens and Stark is making jokes and inviting you for shawarma. “ _Stark will be Stark even after he just escaped from a wormhole, a nuclear bomb and a very big drop.”_

You all walk slowly, Clint is limping and you feel like you are losing every bit of control. You need to sit down, eat something and sleep. You’ll deal with everything else like this massive destruction later.

You sit the table between Steve and Natasha, tired as hell, full of dirt and your hands are trembling from exhaustion and over use of your powers. Everyone is waiting for the food and you just now realize you can’t eat with the mask on. You reach to unclasp it and suddenly feel better when it comes off, allowing the cool air to hot your skin. You lick your lips only to find blood on them and hiss a little “shoot” that makes everyone look at you.  Half of the avengers know you. You worked for SHIELD and you knew Natasha and Clint very well and you were a consultant for the Stark case Natasha worked on a couple of years ago.

That means that only Bruce, Thor and Steve had yet to see your face but the food was coming so they didn’t bat an eye, everyone except Steve who looked at you and gave you a weak tired smile. You smile back and start eating, finally listening to the need of your very tired body.

 

Steve POV

The fight was finally over.  Stark took us for lunch, cracking jokes all the time like we didn’t just destroyed half of New York.  The thoughts keep storming in my head while everything around me seems like to crumble down.

_“what if I did a better job at keeping it away from the bad 70 years ago? What if I made sure it wouldn’t get into anyone’s hands ever again?”_ The silence in the restaurant was heavy. The owners were trying to clean up the mess. I couldn’t help but ask myself “ _we won, but at_ _what cost?”_

I hear someone swear next to me and I turn to see Y/n, to actually see her face. I only saw her eyes up until now, beautiful bright e/c eyes that seem to swallow you whole. She has blood on her lips… she looks so carefree and innocent, I can’t help but smile at her, a weak pathetic smile but a smile nonetheless. She smiles back at me, a shy and tired smile that seems to brighten the whole room like a lightning.

While we ate no one said a thing. I was staring into nothingness, occasionally taking a bite of what’s left of my shawarma. The comfortable silence was broken by no one else but the infamous Tony Stark.

“So Sparky, what about that talk?” I could hear Natasha chuckle and Clint was smiling. Thor kept on eating and only Bruce was interested in the answer.

“Please don’t call me that Stark. I swear I’ll electrocute you until your hair is beyond repair.” She laughed while throwing a piece of food over the table at Stark’s head. Her laugh was such a nice thing to hear… “ _Get it together Steve. This is probably the tiredness talking, also it’s the first and last time you’ll ever see her.”_

“Now now Y/n. is that how you act with the older people? Also you promised me a talk about what was that during the battle.”

“Shut it Tony. I’m too tired for this now. I said we’ll talk, I didn’t say when and I really don’t have the energy for it now. “

“Fine… energy...” He takes a small break before looking back at her. “ How did you charge exactly? Last time I talked to you, you were on the ground trying to find some power.”  Everyone turns their head towards her except me and Thor. She mumbles something fast.

“Say that again Sparky.”

“I said” she clears her throat “I asked Thor to hit me with a lightning bolt.” Tony chokes and Natasha raises an eyebrow while Thor just smiles.

“How did you know it’ll work?” Tony asked.

“I didn’t.” Everyone including me and Thor look at her surprised. “What?” she takes another bite while we chuckle and Thor looks like someone just hit him in the head. She mouths an “It’s okay” and everything is silent again.

 

~

 

Loki is getting sent back to Asgard with Thor to face justice. The rest of the team is here too, waiting for their departure. I take one last look at the tesseract. I can’t wait for it to be out of here, too far away from people with any intention to use it.

 I watch how a blue bright light takes the two gods away from our realm, taking with them one of the biggest threats. I feel at peace in an odd way. The city still needs rebuilding and I think I’ll stick around to help, join SHIELD, help the world in the way I know best.

I look at Y/n, dressed in all black, from the army boots to the leather jacket. She hugs Natasha and Clint. Stark is waiting for her with his arms spread wide waiting for his hug but she gives him a playful punch in the gut and shakes hands with Banner. She comes to me with a wide smile on her face, eyes glowing in the daylight. She tucks a stray hair away.

“Captain. It’s been an honor to fight beside you!” she gives me a mock salute and I can’t help myself but roll my eyes at her. She’s so much like a child it scares me to think she’s been in such a big danger. Is it because she’s a child in my eyes or …

“Same here,… I don’t know your code name.”  Stark yells “Sparky” while she groans and flips him off, making the billionaire laugh.

“Let’s just stick with Y/n.”

“Then call me Steve.” she gives me a smirk. “Need a ride home?”

“Thanks but I got it covered. My ride just got here.” She points to a red car with a man wearing red sunglasses standing next to it. She waves at him and he nods his head. She looks back at me and unexpectedly she hugs me, a short hug, but it feels nice so I hug back then watch her leave with him.

 

~ _two years later~_

 

“Hey fellas. Any of you know where the Smithsonian is? I’m here to pick up a fossil.” Natasha is in her black car smirking at me. She always does these little jokes about my age and I’ve grown accustomed to them.

We leave Sam behind while we are driving towards HQ for a mission. Me and Natasha stay in silence until a red light stops us. I can hear Natasha groan and I chuckle. I want to say something but the noise of a motorcycle distracts me. Next to my door there’s a black Yamaha with some obvious improvements. The rider of the bike is clearly a woman judging by the curves of her body but I try not to stare. She’s dressed all in black and there’s only one small red X on her shoulder. She looks at me and gives me a mock salute and speed off since the light is now green.

I must have looked confused because I can hear Natasha laughing next to me.

“What’s wrong pretty boy? Is your memory failing already? It’s only been a couple of years. How many girls did you fight aliens with?”

I don’t answer. I nod and think about it for a second until the realization hits me: Y/n. I want to ask Natasha if that was really her but we got to the Triskelion and there’s no time for that; we have a mission to complete.

~

We are trying to ditch the agents in the mall. We are headed to the escalators when I feel someone take my hand. I look down at the shorter person and see it’s not Natasha. She walks in front of us but that person says something in Russian and  Natasha disappears a moment later, blending in the crowd like the spy she is. The other woman looks at me and I see it’s Y/n. My heart skips a beat. She winks at me and kisses my cheek. She whispers some instructions and I try to play along. Everything works just fine. The agents don’t know Y/n but the agent that goes up the escalators while we go down knows me too well to be fooled by a hat and a pair of glasses.

Y/n turns to me.

“Kiss me!”

“What?”

“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.” She leaves me no time to answer because her lips are on mine. When she pulls back she grins at me. There’s another agent in front of us. y/n tells me to put my hand on her shoulder and kiss her on the top of her head, turning my body towards her. It works perfectly. Natasha is by the door chewing gum and smirking at us.

“Shall we?”

 


	4. Chapter 4

Steve POV

I could still feel her soft lips pressed on mine, her breath smelling like coffee and mint, big beautiful eyes looking up at me. It was all too beautiful, too perfect. And NOTHING is this perfect.

We are in the underground parking and we are looking for a car. There’s no one here so I push Y/n in a wall, a little harder than I wanted to. I look at her and I see no emotions on her face. Nothing. It’s like she doesn’t even care what’s going on.

To everyone else it would look like we were about to make out, but that was far from truth, even though I could feel her hot breath on my face and the memory of the last kiss was vivid enough to make me want another kiss. “ _What is it with you? Why are you making me feel this way?”_

Your POV

You just kissed Steve, fucking Captain America. “ _What are you thinking Y/n? Nothing as usual. Natasha had it under control, she always does. You just bought yourself a one way ticket to Awkward Land. Good job. Oh I’m just going to meet them here. Ops, looks like they are running. Why don’t I do something stupid like…_ ” The thing that stopped your internal rambling was Steve, pushing you into a wall and pinning you there like he was about to strangle you with his bare hands.  You try to keep your face blank of any emotions even though you were surprised, confused and a little scared if you had to admit.

You looked into his blue eyes and you could feel your fear disappearing. It was clear he didn’t want to hurt you. He just wanted answers.  In that moment you could’ve punched him, you could’ve made him back away. You could’ve, but you didn’t.

“So Steve, wanna ask me something or just look into my eyes until one of us has to blink?” you said after a moment of uncomfortable silence. You knew it probably wasn’t the best time for sarcasm but you couldn’t help yourself.

“How did you know where to find us? Who are you working for? Why are you here? How did you know we were hiding? Why did you help us?”

“Easy there. I can only answer one at a time.” He frowned and you could see he was dead serious. Also you will be dead if you don’t start talking. “Fine, fine..” you looked after Natasha but she wasn’t near you so she couldn’t see anything. “Well Natasha called me. She said you two idiots had a problem and needed some help. Would you now get away from me?” you tried to push him but he didn’t move, if anything, he inched closer to you so your noses were almost touching.

“Hey love birds. I thought we were in a hurry.” You look at Natasha who standing a couple of meters away, giving  you two with a knowing look.  Steve looks one more time at you then he back away, heading for a truck. Natasha smirks at you before getting into the same car, signaling you to come with them.  You shake your head and turn your back at them, making your way to the parking spot you left your bike. You need to get some air, but stay safe at the same time and that means going to your hotel and wait for Natasha to contact you. It’s not that you don’t want to go, but you would be in their way or in a lot of danger, not that it would really matter. You hear the engine a couple of seconds and then it stops. And it happens again. Once more and the sound doesn't stop. “ _God.. of all the stupid decision I made this might top them all”_ you think before turning around and running to the car.

All the road you stayed silent, looking out the window while Natasha and Steve talked. You had headphones so you couldn’t even hear what they were talking about. It’s like you weren’t even there.

Natasha looks at you then back at Steve.

“Is this why you never go to the blind dates I arrange for you?”

“What do you mean?” Steve looks at her with a raised eyebrow. Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Of course you are not going to tell me the truth right away Steve. Let me ask you something. What did you think, or better yet feel when she kissed you?”

“Nothing. She told me PDA makes people uncomfortable and she was right. The agent looked the other way and we got out. Nothing more, nothing less. But you know this already. Hell, you probably taught her that. Why ask?”

“I didn’t teach her that. By the time she got into SHIELD she had a pretty solid knowledge baggage. What can I say? The Russians make the best spies. And I asked you that because I saw how you look at her. Even in the parking lot when you weren’t sure she was one of the good guys, you were still admiring her. Admit it Rogers. You like Y/n.”

“What did you mean by ‘Russians make the best spies’? She’s not Russian. “

“You’re changing the subject Rogers.” Steve looked a little uncomfortable she caught onto that, but he knew there was no point in lying to a spy.

“We’re here. Tell Y/n.” Steve got out the car before Natasha had a chance to respond.

The next hour or so was crazy to say the least. You just found out HYDRA was growing inside SHIELD, that the people you fought next to, the students in the academy could all be traitors. Zola started to say something about the Insight project, the thing that brought you here.  You were here to consult on a matter of energy distribution between the turbines.

“Consult my ass, Fury.” You absorb all the power from the maniac, making him shut up, hopefully for good this time.

“We got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops.” You and Steve look at Natasha surprised.

“Who fired it?”

“SHIELD did.”

There’s not much time so Steve takes Natasha and makes it to cover while you stay put. He looks at you but you smile and the next thing he screams your name while covering himself and Natasha with his shield from impact of the rocket. The blast was powerful. It destroyed everything around the building and left the three of you buried under rocks and dirt.

Steve manages to get all the ruble off them and get Natasha out. He helps her up while searching with his eyes for something even resembling your remains. He doesn’t want to think you are dead of course, but there is no chance you survived that.

“Y/n! Can you hear me?” he yells.

It takes a moment to realize what happened. You are on the floor, a weak force field surrounding you. “ _Okay, that worked just fine, but now this  force field is getting weaker every second. Time to expand and get away from this hell hole.”_  You get up and start expanding your little safety bubble until it clears itself from all the rubble, letting you see the sky, at least for a second or so before everything goes black.

Everything is blurry and your ears are ringing. You try to make something out of what you see but you give up fast. There’s a lot of dust near you, like a fog that doesn’t let you breath. You feel a strong arm pulling you up and you try to get some support on that person after you are back on your feet. You can feel blood on your upper lip, probably a nose bleed, you have a bit of a headache and it feels like there’s a small head wound too. Your hearing starts to get better and you can hear your name being yelled. You put a hand on your head where you feel something sticky. _“Okay, nose bleed, head wound, feels like a concussion or maybe it’s  just exhaustion ...Jesus! Who keeps yelling?”_

You look up and see, _“at least now I can see”,_ Natasha yelling at you. You snap out of your.. whatever that was. You feel a little more stable on your feet now and you murmur a little “thanks” and “let’s go” . Natasha is close by, being a bit shaken up herself while Steve walks behind you wondering how are you even alive and being amazed by you, like the first time he saw you.  

 

You are now drying your hair at Sam’s house. You just took a shower and are tired as hell, mostly from the little stunt you pulled back at the camp. “ _A couple of watts and I should be fine.. I hope.”_ Steve walks in and sits next to you, without saying anything, not even looking at you.

“Natasha?”

“She’s in the shower. “ he looks at you but when you make eye contact he looks the other way again. You two stay in an uncomfortable silence until you sigh.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, just a little tired. “ you look at your trembling hands.

“Y/n… your head was bleeding and you blacked out for a couple of seconds. Tell me what’s wrong.” His eyes were looking so kind and his voice was calming you in a way you never felt before. He looked worried, worried for a person he didn’t knew, worried for you. All he knows keeps crumbling down around him, right and wrong mix, friends turn against him, millions have a big target on their foreheads and he is worried for you.

“It was just…” you sigh again. “There really is no way how to explain this. When I use my powers I have to use the power I have in my body. That’s why I charge, or feed if you want to phrase it that way… today I guess I had to use what I had and some of my own energy ,the kind of energy that keeps you pumping and going throughout the day. After a coffee and some power I should be just fine.” You look at him and give him a weak smile. His blue eyes were searching any evidence you were in some kind of physical pain but there was nothing but exhaustion.

Everything is silent again. You two were staring at each other, not blinking, not moving, like you were communicating through your eyes. It doesn’t feel weird or uncomfortable. It’s nice. You just sit there, like there’s nothing to do other than this. Natasha enters the room and you look at her, breaking eye contact.

“I’ll go ask Sam if I can make his power bill explode.” They both smile at you while you exit, whispering in the background. You were already too far to hear Natasha tell Steve he looks like a puppy.

 


	5. Chapter 5

_“Easy task. Get Sitwell”_ The plan was that you would walk around the place in case he makes a run for it, knowing you can’t shoot him in broad day light, as much as Natasha would want to. So there you are, walking around pretending to wait for someone, dressed as a normal 20-something girl, long pants, a shirt and a black leather jacket with boots. You start to hear in your earpiece Sam’s voice.

“Agent Sitwell, how was lunch? I hear the crab cakes here are delicious.” You laugh at that. Sitwell looks around in a semi panicked way.

“Who is this?”

“The good-looking guy in the sunglasses, your 10 o'clock.” Sitwell looks the wrong direction and you sigh and roll your eyes. “Your other 10 o'clock. There you go.”

“What do you want?”

“You're gonna go around the corner to your right. There's a grey car two spaces down. You and I are gonna take a ride. “

“And why would I do that?”

“Because that tie looks really expensive, and I'd hate to mess it up. And if do try to make a run for it and our expert marksman misses, you’ll still die, a more violent and painful death if I might add.” You chuckle.

“And what sniper do you have there?” Sitwell is grinning like an idiot.

“Not a sniper. Much worse. See that gorgeous woman, next to the black motorcycle?” he looks at you and you smile and nod. “That’s the one. I suggest you start walking.”

~

You were on a bike in front of their car in which at Steve, Sam, Natasha and the guy you took, Sitwell something, someone you frankly didn’t know and to be honest you couldn’t care less if it wasn’t for this HYDRA mess. You look at the road ahead and suddenly you hear screams from behind. When you look in the mirror you see someone on the front of the car with the wheel in their _metal_  hand. The three of them jump out the car just before it crashes in the bridge.

You stop your bike and start shooting at the other HYDRA agents that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.  You run to help Sam fight them while he covers Steve that’s now under the bridge. Everything happens so fast you can hardly register what is going on.

 Someone aims for your head but your force field stops the bullet at the last moment. You turn to look at the shooter and your blood freezes. Everything around seems to be moving in slow motion and suddenly getting to Steve seems impossible. Your heart seems to be beating too fast even in this situation and you can feel the fear getting a grip on you. You start to run while the agent shoots bullet after bullet.

It was a moment of carelessness when you were fighting someone else that a bullet grazes your arm, making you back away. He took advantage of that moment and hit you with his gun, making you fall to the ground, powerless. Everything is spinning around you but you feel your hands being tied behind your back and the cold steel of a gun pressed in your neck.

You hear like in a dream someone yelling “get on your knees.”

~

“It was him. He looked right at me like he didn't even know me.”

“How is that even possible? It was, like, 70 years ago.”

“Zola. Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and...”

“None of that's your fault, Steve.”

“Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.” The van hits a bump on the road and Natasha hisses in pain while you try to stop a groan. You head feel like it was hit by several walls several times.  You don’t say anything though.

“We need to get a doctor here. If we don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out here in the truck.” said Sam looking at Natasha who was now pale. Her shoulder had a nasty wound and besides the pain there was the bleeding that didn’t show any signs of stopping.

“Y/n are you ok? What happened out there?”

“I’m fine. It’s just my past seems to have caught up to me. The guy who shot me… his name is Paul Lawson. We’ve met before and it ended much worse for me. “ At the name of Paul Lawson, Natasha looks at you, dead in the eye like she was asking if you were sure it was him, the guy who shot you in Europe, the guy who almost killed you.

The next thing you know one of the guards teases the other one until he passes out and then removes the helmet.

“That thing was squeezing my brain.” You sigh in relief when you see Maria looking at you four.

~a bit of a bigger time skip~

Everything went pretty well so far.. and by pretty well you mean it’s a complete disaster. The Insight Project was launched, all the secrets SHIELD has are all over the internet, Natasha almost died, again, Steve is fighting Bucky and he looks like he is losing and there are more and more HYDRA agents everywhere and they just keep on coming no matter how many you kill or incapacitate.  

There’s no one that can help Steve, you are stuck on the ground fighting for your life. Right now there’s no one around you so you take a breath and listen to the other on the coms. One of the hellicariers hits the Triskelion and destroys it while the other two fall in the water, leaving nothing but ruble and destruction. You feel like you can’t watch, it’s not like you are in a safe place anyway, you should make a run for it before something hits you like someone steps on an ant. When you turn around you are greeted by the sight of Lawson keeping a gun in the direction of your head a couple of feet away.

“You just won’t die. I learned the hard way that a shot in the head is a hell lot better than one in the heart. Freaks like you might survive. But no, you can’t be touched by bullets, can you? You feel invincible?” he shoots a bullet towards you. It would’ve hit you straight in the eye. “I” he shoots another one while stepping forward “am sick and tired of you and if wasn’t for your talent you would’ve been dead right now” he says, taking a shot for almost every word. You are now in a place you can’t run from, he has lots of ammo and you have oh so little power left.

Another round in and you are done, breathing heavily as you run away, no shield to protect you now. And then it hits you, not a bullet nor an idea even though that would’ve been welcomed. It’s a dart of some sorts, making you dizzy

 


	6. Chapter 6

_“Guys … I need help. Tranquilizer, maybe poison. Out of juice. Come…..” her voice suddenly stopped and there was some static and the noise of ruble hitting the ground._

_“Y/n tell us your coordinates and we’ll pick you up.” said Sam. There was no answer._

_“Y/n” Natasha’s voice screamed while the on the other end there was only static._

Steve POV

 “Are you coming?” said Tony on the other line.

“Why? To see an empty casket being buried near a stone with her name on it? She’s not dead Stark.”

“Steve, we looked everywhere. There was no sign of her and we have postponed it long enough. Come on. It’ll only be us and maybe some of her old SHIELD friends if they didn’t turn.”

“I already said no. I’m busy searching for Bucky. I have a new lead.” I sighed and looked at the file before me. I didn’t have a new lead. I didn’t talk with Sam in a while. I just can’t go see another funeral. I had my fair share of those.

“Well if you are busy…” Tony’s voice trailed off. I wanted this call to end and I almost hang up before I could hear the voice of Pepper.

“Look Steve, if you change your mind, you know where we’ll be.  I hope you come. I know you didn’t really know her but I guess she died in your battle so showing up might be nice.”

“No guilt tripping of course, Pepper” I say with a sad smile. “Bye!” I hang up.

 

~6 months later~

 

I look over the file SHIELD had on her. There was so little it was like I didn’t know anything at all. In a bright red there was a stamp “DECESED” from about four five years ago.

“It wouldn’t be the first time she cheated death. She can do it again.” I hear someone behind me saying. I turn around ready to fight the intruder to fight Clint, his face covered in bandages, dressed in civilian clothes with a duffel bag in his hands.

“Clint. Good to see you are alive.” We shake hands.

“I almost wasn’t. Again.” We laugh.

“So, what brings you here?” He laughs. He searches in his bag and takes out a stack of papers.

“Look, I know that kid. She is most definitely  alive, and most definitely in big trouble. I know there’s nothing much that file can tell you “ he says pointing to the few papers in a yellow file on the table next to us “ so that’s why I took the liberty to write down some things I know about her. It’s not much and it sure as hell it’s not all but I didn’t have time.”

“Wanna stay for a beer and maybe share some info?”

“Sure, but make it a coffee. I haven’t slept in what feels like days.”

“Knowing you I bet you haven’t.” He laughed and nodded, plopping on the couch. He put his feet up on the coffee table while taking a sip of the coffee I got him.” Where should I start?”

“You could start by telling me how did she enter the agency at the age of 19? I mean, isn’t that a bit …”

“Young?”

“Sort of.” I took a sip of my beer looking at the blond archer who hasn’t stopped smiling.

“Well… “ Clint was interrupted by a loud knock on the door. I got up and walked to the door and looked through the peephole. There were two big men covered in tattoos wearing leather from head to toe, carrying guns with silencers.

“Just a moment” I say as I get my shield, being as silent as I can. Clint gets his bow and arrow from his bag and hides when I crack the door open., careful so they don’t see I was ready for them.

“Yes. May I help you?”

“Yes” one of those guys says smiling. “You can give us the blonde archer or we’ll blow you pretty head off.”

“Oh.. okay” I say when they barge in and I hit one of them in the jaw, making him stumble back and drop his gun. Clint gets the other one in the arm and he drops his weapon. I throw my shield hitting them both in one throw so they fall unconscious on the floor.

“That might be my fault” said Clint scratching the back of his head smiling guiltily. They must have followed me. You know what they say. You don’t play with the Russian mob. ”

“Mission?”

“Nah.. I was following on a lead for your buddy Sam.  He’s close Steve. Sure, that was a big nothing but Sam is really close. That’s why I came here actually. He drank his coffee while looking at the two gorillas passed out on the floor. Sam found something you need to see before he sends it to Stark to take it apart and find out how it ticks.”

“What?” I say confused. I wished I could involve as little people as I can but I guess lately that’s not possible.

I walk in a bank volt, smelling something that brings in my mind war memories but it’s pitch black and I can’t see anything. I tighten by grip on the shield while Clint walks in front of me as sure as he was walking in his own house.

“Clint what…” The light suddenly  turns on and Sam stands in the middle of the room, surrounded by dead bodies and a strange machine.


	7. Chapter 7

“You can sure make an entrance” said Clint while looking around. He let out a whistle after he assessed the 10 dead bodies in the small room. “I wouldn’t want to piss off the guy that did this. No offence Steve”

“None taken. To be honest if Bucky did this it means he must have gone easy on me last April. Sam what are we doing here? And what’s that? How did you even find this place?” I say looking at the man that stands with his arms crossed and a smile in front of me.

“Man” he says letting out a chuckle “ has anyone told you before you ask too many questions at once?” I grimace and look somewhere else.

“I’ve been told. That’s another mia frie..” I stop thinking we are not really friends. We barely knew each other after all ” agent I’m trying to find”

“Oh...”his smile disappears I can hear him mumble her name under his breath and he shows pain on his face. “Anyway, I think you might want to talk this somewhere else. I called the police and they’re going to be here for the bodies. They couldn’t have been here for long. As you notice there’s no smell yet. I’m thinking about 6 hours and if my theory is right, we are behind with 6 hours so let’s keep it short. “

Me and Clint nod and we head out with Sam behind us. We go back to my place. There are no more passed out men on my floor. It’s good my contacts in shield are still on my side. I take some beers out of the fridge and sit in front of them on a chair while they sit in the couch I sat with Clint an hour or so ago.

Sam looks around and his eyes land on the papers on the coffee table written by Clint. He takes a sip of his beer and looked at me with a smirk. Clint stood up and headed to the fridge to grab a bite most likely.

“Before we get down to business… why didn’t you tell me you were looking for Y/n. I would be happy to help.”

“I thought you are busy with Bucky. Plus there is almost nothing to go on. Until today all I knew about her was her name, place and date of birth  and what happened between the age of 19 to 23 while she was in shield. Even that is sketchy. The rest is a big question mark. “

“Thrusth meh..” said Clint while chewing on a sandwich. He stopped to swallow.  “I still don’t know it all. You might want to talk to Nat for that. They’ve been close since she was 17. I mean we are close too but I think they had more in common and they could have girl talk...pff “ he rolled his eyes “like that shit matters. I always told Nat y/n likes me better. “ he took another bite and said more words that I’m sure were to prove how y/n liked him more than Natasha.

“ok.. so let me get this straight. “ said Sam smirking” you barely know her, but you’re looking for her up and down? What’s wrong man, you in love or something?”

I blush and take the papers from the table, putting them in a drawer next to the other files I had on her and on Bucky. “Something. Now about that vault?”

“Oh man this is good. So I told the guys to pack that machine and send it to Stark and we’ll have to wait for the answer but I’ll take a wild guess and say it’ll have something to do with Bucky. Most likely his memory. It had that weird headset or whatever. The guys were some random mob. Probably were for the same thing but someone got to them. My guess HYDRA. I think they want to find their asset and bring him back to his brained washed stage.” I look the other way again. I know Sam didn’t know Bucky before the incident, but there’s a good man inside of the winter soldier. There’s my best friend there and I mean to rescue him.

“So what’s our plan? How do we find him?” I say. I run a hand through my hair and down my face a couple times. I guess even I need sleep.

“Well… that’s a small problem but I think I have an idea. We tried the places he knew before he was hydra. I looked all over Brooklyn and other places you suggested and I came out empty. They were at a hydra location. I’m sure they had a reason, right? So where would you go if you had next to no memories than a torture room?”

“How about places he had a safe house during missions?” said Clint. He was now on his second cup of coffee. I was starting to feel like I’ll fall asleep if I don’t have one myself. I get up and pour some in a mug and drink it all just to get rid of the feeling of drowsiness.

“Clint has a point. I have a file here. He worked only a mission in NY as far as I remember reading, though the intel might be wrong or incomplete. There’s not much Natasha could gather.” I take the file from the drawer. “Here”, I say giving the papers to Sam. “His safe house was an abandoned building. I mean they might have been wrong. He had no handler for a while.”

“Why?” said Clint in a cautious voice like he was standing right there.

“I guess he...um. killed him.” I swallow some coffee and look at the two men.

“So if we find where he sat during that period, we might find him. Great. I’ll get to research. Clint you should contact Nat. if we’re dealing with another asset we might need her to help. Cap, you look awful. When’s the last time you slept?”

“Sam I don’t need a babysitter. “ I roll my eyes at him. First he makes sure I eat now that I sleep. He starts to act like Bucky since before I was captain America.

“Let me humor you. I’ll go to sleep and you keep in touch. If stark finds out something in the next couple of hours let me know. “ I go to my bedroom and lie down on my bed. I keep thinking I don’t need to sleep now. I have to find Bucky, I have to find Y/n. “ _I have… to find..”_

_It started like any other dream. I know it’s a dream because it’s the same I had for months. It starts with me on the train, the day I though Bucky died. Only this time I get to him. This time I get to save my best friend. He looks me in the eyes and it’s the same thing I saw before he fell, fear, only this time he smiles and hugs me, telling me how happy he is I caught him. It hurts so much to see this, to see him thanking me for saving him._

_As always after we get the mission done I get transported to my date with Peggy. She is wearing a gorgeous red dress, her hair is wavy, her lips red and full, her eyes glowing in the lights. She’s so beautiful. I grab her by the waist and pull her close, leaning in for a kiss, only she disappears before my eyes. I’m left with my arms empty, in a dark room and when the light comes up I’m again on the plane. I’m in the air and I can hear her voice begging me not to crash it. I was about to respond, like I always do, like I did when it really happened, only this time I get punched in the face._

_In front of me, there he is, the winter soldier, ready to punch me again until he recognizes me. He falls on his knees, telling me over and over again how sorry he is for all the things he did. I can feel the hot tears on my cheeks._

_The plane crashes and Bucky slips out. He looks like he’s falling of the train all over again. I scream out but I can’t hear anything._

_“You just disappoint us all, don’t you Rogers?” a voice says. I look at the source and I see Y/n, wearing  her black uniform with the red X on her shoulder. “I helped you, I saved you, and you let me die.” Suddenly she’s a teen, big bright eyes shooting daggers at me. “I didn’t run away for this. I didn’t survive all those thing to be let to die at the hands of HYDRA Steve.” I try to wake up now; my heart is full of sorrow and I can’t tell her how sorry I am, because it wouldn’t matter, she’s not real. I blink a couple of times trying to wake up, but it’s for nothing because I wake up in Sam’s room, back when me, Natasha and Y/n asked for his help. And there she is, standing in front of me, so close I can feel her hot breath on my face, big beautiful eyes looking up at me, her hand tangled in my hair, pulling me close until our lips crash together, the taste of coffee invading my mouth. It’s so rushed but still it feels like an eternity._

_“Save me Rogers!”_

_“I’m trying Y/n.”_

_“That’s not good enough” she says backing away, slowly turning into a figure dressed head to toe in black, covered by a black cape. “You’ll never be good enough to save your friends will you?” . Her voice is rough like she screamed for weeks. “Let me help you!” The next thing I know I get punched with a wave of energy that knocks me out._

I wake up screaming, drenched in cold sweat with tear stains on my face. My bed is a mess, probably from all the tossing and turning I did in my sleep. I look at the clock. It’s almost midnight. I don’t feel any more rested and this nightmare turned me upside down.  I check my phone and see I have a couple of lost calls and a message from Sam “ _Hey sleeping beauty. I heard from Stark. Call me!_ ” and one from Clint “ _Hey Capsicle, me and Nat are running on a lead. We might get some intel on our new asset. Also Stark wants to talk to you. Getting the team together as always Cap. Stay tuned_.”

“Yeah.. getting the team together…” I get out the bedroom and immediately drink a cup of coffee and call Stark.

“Hey Tony. I heard you have some news for me.”

“Yeah... I’m a bit busy right now. Can you come by tomorrow morning? Bring Sam. The killer couple left, but they said they’ll be back fast. Now if you excuse me…” I can hear the voice of JARVIS in the background followed the noise of metal hitting metal.

“You’re stuck in Mark 57 again, aren’t you?”

“I just don’t know why it doesn’t work. JARVIS a little help here.” I end the call before I could hear anything. I have to clear my mind.

“Go take a nap. You’ll feel better. Thanks Sam” I say in a mock tone while I go wash the nightmare off. I think some hours in the gym might do the trick better than a cold shower though so I head to the gym, planning on punching a bag until I start to forget everything about her.

Her words keep playing over and over in my head like a broken CD. “ _You’ll never be good enough to save your friends will you?”_  I think she’s right, to some extent. I never saved my friends, not when it really mattered. I couldn’t save Bucky, not back during the war, not last April. I couldn’t save her, Coulson, Fury almost died next to me too and who knows how many died in the war I fight every day.

So instead of standing home and going over and over the information I have I decided to hit a punching bag until my hands are numb and bloody, the pain keeping me distracted from everything else. And suddenly it’s morning and I have to go back so I can get ready for going to Stark.

~

“Okay, I looked at this piece of junk and I can say HYDRA was smart. I mean it was an amazing piece of technology that could fry your brain until most of your memories were well.. gone. But not really. See you don’t erase memory. You erase the connection between the memory and the rest of the brain. Somehow Bucky got that connection back. It’s quite brilliant if you ask me. “

“So why call it a piece of junk? “ said Sam next to me pointing to the chair while I keep my  bruised hands in my pockets, hidden from his eyes.

“That’s all it is now. It’s completely fried. It’ll never work again and with the pieces melted, it’s impossible to build another. I didn’t even think it’s possible to do this, but I guess their new asset got a bit angry. Well you can say he has some anger issues about as Bruce’s. The guys we found? Their heart gave out, alongside every organ in their body. Also their brain was mush. Cause of death.. heart attack due to severe electrocution. It’s like they decided to go for a swim with a high voltage cable. Doctor’s words, not mine. “

“What doctor?”

“Bruce. He’s not here right now. He left about an hour ago to some lab in LA to get another opinion on this from a brilliant doctor that I don’t know.”

“So what’s the punch line?”

“So.. we have someone with a powerful taser gun on our hands. Don’t tell Bruce. He hates those things. “ I smile at the memory but at the same time I cringe because that’s how Y/n killed those guys on the hellicarier back when we were fighting Loki. Tony keeps cracking jokes every five words and it starts to be annoying.

“Ok.. but at the risk of sounding stupid” said Sam looking slightly worried, “what could have done this? It’s not anything I’ve ever seen or heard about.”

“To be honest I have no clue. If this is HYDRA they have some really good tech and I would like to know where they got it from. I’m working on something to stop it, assuming it’s a piece of technology that can emit electrical shockwaves at very high voltage. I am not even sure that’s what happened. I’m waiting for Clint and Natasha to fill the blanks.”

“What do they know more?” I say like I was woken up. “ Clint sent me a message but he didn’t mention what he was doing.”

“Well he got in touch with a team that has a hydra agent into custody. They went for.. um… interrogation. It shouldn’t take long with both of them there.” We all exchange looks. We should hear from them in a couple of hours. Maybe they can prove me wrong and help Stark build something to stop it.. assuming it’s an it.

“So what are we supposed to do until then?”

“Well I have work to do and you two… don’t you have a crazy one armed Russian assassin to find?” and with that Stark turned his back on us and started to work, occasionally talking to JARVIS.  Me and Sam left to get lunch at a nearby coffee shop.

“So about that..” he said looking at my hands.

“No. Where are we with finding the building?”

“Okay” he chuckled. “You know one day you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours. I’m guessing it’s not only God Bless America or whatever.” I roll my eyes but smile nonetheless. Sam is a good friend and he deserves to know. And I will tell him as soon as I know. “To answer your question, I have it down to all NY. There are a lot and I mean a lot of abandoned buildings. Some of them have been demolished and other things were rebuild on top of them. Those we can rule out since he wouldn’t want to be seen. “

“He needs somewhere with a lot of exits, maybe something with a sewer running underneath. He needs a supply store nearby but not so near so other can follow him back. He’s going to look for something that’s not used at all. Let’s start with this.” I take his laptop and start ruling out places that I thought were not suited for this. One of them stood out from my childhood. I turn the screen to Sam.

“Here…” my phone rings.

“yes. This is Steve.” Sam tries to hold in his laughter next to me.

_“Steve get you star spangled ass back at Stark tower. We’re back.”_ And with this Natasha’s voice is gone and I’m picking my things, trying to make Sam move faster.

~

“So we found a code name for this so called asset. They call the asset “The reaper”. I know what you’re thinking. That’s creepy and why on earth would they call it that.” Said Natasha while connecting a memory drive to a laptop. “The guy we spoke to knew little information, but … I’ll just let you see for yourselves. This is the security footage from a weapons manufacturing factory.” She showed us a small screen that seemed to show a lab with only one person there. “And that is doctor Donatien Chan. He was working on something new and he was recording himself, like most scientists do. That means we have sound.” She turned on the sound and let the event play through. Clint turned his back to the screen and left the room saying something about checking what I found at the café and Natasha sat down in a chair exhausted and clearly affected by what we were about to see.

The room was empty except Donatien who was talking to himself about a gun named Icer, that he could fill with the sedative he wanted, that could make him millions. There were crashes outside and he panicked, getting a weapon out of his desk.

“ _not me. Not me. Please god let the reaper not be after me.”_ The door is slammed open a familiar voice says something in Russian while the lights are flickering, then the camera stops recording for a couple of seconds. When it’s turned back one there’s a dead body in the middle of the room and the attacker is nowhere to be seen on the feeds, like they just vanished.

We all look distressed at the screen, eyes wide open, hearts beating so loud there’s an echo in the room. I look back at Natasha who has gotten herself a glass of whiskey. I’m so surprised I can’t even speak and I can see Sam and Tony feel the same.

“I’m here for you.” She gulps the rest of the drink and looks us dead in the eye.

“No…” I manage to get out of my dry throat.

“I’m afraid yes.” said Clint coming in. “Good news, I think I might have found Bucky. Bad news.. yes. What you saw was the new asset of HYDRA, a person they call the reaper because apparently that’s the catchphrase “I’m here for you”. Basically if you disappointed HYDRA or are thinking about betraying or are not enlisted yet, your soul is collected. And the worse news… that’s Y/n. She’s definitely not dead. She is death.”   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So i've been posting a chapter a day, but i have only written until the 10th part, so the updates might be a bit slower from now on. Thank you all for the kudos. it means the world to me.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feels, so many feels.

The silence felt like it was swallowing me whole. There were no words to be said. The thing we were so afraid of happened. Sure, at least now we know, but that doesn’t help us finds her, or stop her from killing other people.

The first to speak was Tony. His voice was shaking and he looked like he was fighting back tears.

“I have to call Pepper, tell her to come here. I suggest we all get comfy and stay safe in the tower for a while. I’ll call Bruce too. If HYDRA knows we are after them, and they know, they might send Y/n …” he stopped mid-sentence but it seemed too much of an effort to say the rest of it. We all got the point anyway. It was a wise choice, after all. I swallow the lump in my throat and looks at Clint who looks as devastated as we all do, maybe a bit more. He and Natasha have known her for years.

 “Clint..” his head snapped up, pain evident in his blue eyes “you were saying something about Bucky? I think we all need something else to think about.”

“We’re going to have to think about it, sooner or later.” Natasha stood up and looked at us, her serious face sending chills up my spine. “We have to come up with a plan, how to save her and Bucky and what to do after we got to them and what to do if we don’t get to them..” 

“She’s right guys. I think we should get our stuff here, and start making a battle plan when we’re all gathered. “ everyone nods. “Tony you’re sure we can all stay here?”

“yeah. After the mandarin incident I made sure this tower has enough rooms for about 20 people, with bathrooms. Get some things here and let’s get to work.” He turns around and starts working on something, taking his mind off everything. The rest of us leave without another word.

~

For the next few days we sat in the tower gathering intel, calling everyone we know, that she knew, people that might have information on either of them because as it turned out, what we found was wrong. The building was empty, no sign that someone was ever there. We were back at square one. We were all starting to feel like we couldn’t breath . The tower was huge and we all had a room and all we needed, stark made sure of that, but the tension was too much. One of us going to snap sooner or later, and with Banner back with us it was a pretty bad idea. So we took a day off. Tony and pepper went out, me, Nat and Clint grabbed some beers.  It was all good, as good as it can be.

“And then she just punched the cop in the face and jumped over him like he was nothing.” Clint laughed some more. “ He was huge. He was like a mountain.” He starts to pretend to walk like him and we laugh at his funny face. “So she runs away and just walks in face first in me and nearly falls while Coulson looks at me like ‘you just met her’ because I was telling her how much I want to see her.” All three of us laugh. We’ve been sharing funny stories and Clint was telling us about the day he met Y/n. “I have some videos, and Nat you are going to kill me for keeping these but… “ he connected his phone to the big screen and played a short video.

_I could recognize the interrogation room on the hellicarrier. Clint was obviously filming with his phone, but the camera was on Natasha. I could hear his voice asking someone to say their real name and other questions like how did you turn off the alarm systems and how did they get away._

_“Listen kid” he turns the camera and I can see Y/n. She couldn’t be older than 16. She had short hair, a hoodie, glasses that had one lens broken and she had a nasty bruise on her left cheek. She didn’t notice the camera so she kept talking in Russian._

_“She says we can fuck ourselves and that she won’t tell us shit. Quite a mouth on a 16 year old kid.”_

_“I’m 17. And also not a kid.” She rolled her eyes at Natasha when she raised a brow._

_“Oh... right. Today is your birthday, right? I think I remember now Y/n L/n. “ Y/n raised her head and there was panic written all over her features._

_“What? We forgot to tell you we know your name, that you ran away at 8 years, that your parents treated you like crap before they both died? Honey we know it all. What we don’t understand is why you would agree to work with those guys. It’s not like they treated you right. You were made into a weapon just because you had no one who cared about you…”_

_“Spare me the talk, ok? I’ve heard it. You can do better. You are so smart. You can get away from that life, but it’s all crap. They would find me anyway. And it was better with them or without. Don’t act like you know what I’ve been through.” Natasha looked at Clint. Y/n looked the same way and then I heard another swear and all went black._

“That was about a week after we got to her. It was on her birthday. We made a video almost every year. Here’s the next one. She doesn’t hate us in this one.”

_The video was in the gym. Y/n was sparring with Natasha and Clint was too far to hear what they were talking about. Suddenly Y/n was on the floor and I could hear her scream “Fuck”. Clint then ran towards her in a stealthy mode and by the time she turned around he was already too close to avoid so Clint gave a her a pie full of whipped cream in her face. She started to scream and she ran after him and after some blurry frames the two of them were laughing full of pie on their faces. Natasha took over the video._

_“So big day. Who do you feel now that you an adult?”_

_“I feel like if I don’t enter the academy I’ll die of sadness. Remember Romanoff it’s your fault I applied for the field agent part. Also I feel like Clint is going to die because there’s pie all over my face and I’m so  dirty. I just want to crawl into bed and sleep foreveeer.” Natasha laughed while Clint nodded._

_“Yes, this is adulthood. You’re going to be fine because not only I brought pie, I also came to tell you YOU ARE IN!” Y/n screamed and jumped in Clint’s arms telling him thank you while they both congratulated  her._

Clint looks at Natasha and they both smile bitterly.

“We gave her a beer that night and we stayed on the roof all night telling stories that she should have told us in the interrogations, or she should have saved for therapy. She told us how her dad killed her mom and then he got run over by car while chasing her. Her adoptive parents beat the carp out of her once because she broke a light bulb. It was the first time her powers manifested. Since then they’ve only evolved. When she 8 she ran away and the Russian mob found her and well… she was a one hell of a fighter and had a pretty ugly record by the time we got to her.”

“She hated training with Clint because she could beat him too easily.” Said Natasha and both all laughed while Clint pouted.

“I bet she did. Anyone wants a challenge when they train. We’re the fun if you know you can beat your partner without breaking a sweat?” I say, cocking an eyebrow at Clint. 

“I’ll play the next one since you two are being assholes.”

_Y/n was sitting at a table, solving what seemed like difficult chemistry problems, surrounded by books and files. She eventually screamed out of frustration and pushed everything off the table, hitting her head on the hard wood._

_“Clint I’m not in the mood for another prank. I have an exam tomorrow at chem and I don’t know anything. Getting tortured, having to fight hours upon hours, being chased through woods while shot at, taking care of electricity … everything… hell even controlling a mutation is easier than this.”_

_“Come one birth day girl. We need to get you some air, snacks and booze. Next year you might be next to Natasha in the field. Leave a message to that bitter bitter woman in China kiddo. “_

_“I miss you Nat and next time please take Clint with you. He’s a pain in the ass when you’re gone. He’s like a lost puppy and it’s just sad.” She laughed while clint shook his head._

_Clint got close and held a mini cupcake with a single candle on and sang an off key “Happy birthday” while Y/n laughed with tears in her eyes._

_“I fucking love you and Nat.”_

_“Hey, is that how you talk to your big brother? I think I’ll take this back…” and right then Y/n pushed the cupcake into Clint’s face while he screamed. She then took over the movie and filmed him full of cake on his face, then herself saying “Revenge is sweet” and the screen went black. The next image is of Clint tucking her in after she fell asleep on the couch._

_“Nat we miss you. I’m sorry you weren’t here to see Y/n almost start a bar fight because a guy was hitting on her. Come back soon. “_

“You sent that when I was deep undercover and couldn’t get to DC in time for her birthday. She was 20. Can you believe we’ve known her half her life?”  said Natasha with a big smile on her face even if she had tears in the corners of her eyes.  she knew the next one. She got up and told us she needed to use the bathroom and she’ll be back with more beer.

Clint played the next video. It had only a couple of seconds and it was blurry. There was nothing much to hear but laughter.

_“This is my first beer guys… legal of course.” She laughed and the others cheered her. They were clearly drunk and that definitely not her first beer of the evening._

_“Two days from now right? London? How are you feeling about your first solo undercover mission?” asked Clint._

_“Oh.. I have a good feeling about this.” she then looked at the camera. “Remember London. This is when everything changes” She smiled and the video froze on her face smiling, showing all the happiness and greatness and power in her eyes. She was gorgeous, innocent, young. It was a heart breaking view knowing who she was now, what she was now. “_

I take another gulp of beer. Yes, London did change things and as far as I know, not as she was expecting. Clint had tears on his face. He didn’t even bother to wipe them.  Natasha was in the doorframe with a straight face, but I could see that behind that wall of indifference she was crying, she was screaming for her little sister back, for little 16 years old Y/n with big glasses and a high pony tail, with sarcastic comments and witty comebacks, the not experienced fighter that got annoyed when she lost, the Y/n that could get into bar fights and could go back to learning advanced chemistry the next minute like it was nothing. I feel like I know her now more than ever, and I still have no idea who she truly was before HYDRA got her.

HYDRA. Just thinking about this makes me angry. They took my best friend, turned him into killing machine, they destroyed the only agency that could have done come good in the world, they took Y/n and made her what she has always been afraid of becoming, a monster using her powers to kill.

I slam the beer bottle on the table and get up. If I want to do something it’s not going to happen here. I go to my room and look over the algorithm running on the screen of the laptop. I didn’t understand the technical part but Stark says it pinpoints the possibilities where Bucky could hide, based on what we know or assume. So far everything it suggested was just a big bag of nothing since everything checked out through street cameras or because the buildings were being used already.

I hear the familiar ‘bing’ and take the address. I get my shield, text Sam and head for the location with no other thought than to get to Bucky. To my surprise I actually did.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story is back to your POV.
> 
> There are six months since you disappeared. Steve and the others have been out looking for you and Bucky, but what did really happen that day? What did you do those months? Where were you, who were you with? Can you even remember? Can you be sure that what you remember is real?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know maybe you were expecting this sooner, so was I tbh and i have no excuse, but that's it. Also if anyone was excited for Bucky, bad news lol Please tell me what you think of it, or if you think i should change the warnings.

Your Pov

You wake with a start and look the way you know the door was. Sure, it was pitch dark and complete silence. Maybe you were just paranoid. You put your head back in the tough mattress and try to relax. You feel like a dog, trained to attack and respond to his owner’s command.

There it was again, the sound of footsteps, the sound of keys in the guard's pocket, the cheery greetings of the doctor.

“ _I guess it's morning”_ you say sighing. The door starts opening letting in a blinding light. You squeeze your eyes shut and you silently wish they’d leave you be, but obviously a second later you feel the cold hand of the guards lifting you up and they carry you out while you are unable to top them. You know you can’t. You can barely move, not to mention fight. The only thing that keeps you, you, is your mind and they’re trying to take that away from you too. They are trying to make you their puppet and you cannot anything to change it.

“How are we feeling this fine morning Y/n? I trust you slept fine, we have a long day ahead of us.”

You grumble in response and he laughs, a sickening sound that only makes you angrier.

“I have a surprise for you. We managed to come up with a new formula. This should work just fine. You might still feel a bit dizzy, maybe have some hallucinations, but this” he says lifting up to your eyes a picture of the new compound “will make you feel better. You want to feel better, don't you?”

For the last couple of weeks everything they pumped into your body gave you terrible hallucinations, headaches, made you vomit countless times, nearly killed you, and now he's sure it'll work. You would roll your eyes if that wouldn't bring upon you a slap in the face. Your eye is surely still black and you can taste the blood of your lips from time to time. This is no time for being cocky.

They strap you in on the same glass table in the new lab. After the incident in the bank vault they made sure not to let any metal near you, or anything that conducts electricity for that matter.

They pull back your hair and inject you in the neck with the new substance. It barely hurts anymore. The room starts to spin, the lights are more blinding than ever, the voices in the background become dull, the rest of your body feels like it's been severed from your head, all you want is to shut your eyes and let death embrace you but inside your mind people scream. A read-head looks at you with disgust, her lips move but you cannot hear anything. Finally she turns her back on you and you don't know why you feel so sad, like you want her to stay. Someone approaches you, an old man in a wheelchair, pushed by a tough looking man that barely spears you a glance before snorting. The older man shakes his head.

“Oh Y/n what have you become.” That name, so familiar, could it be yours? You want to scream at him to say it again, to tell you in his calm, warm voice that name again but he is gone. You feel tears on your cheeks and the air in your lungs comes out in sobs.

“I was right about you, you’re just a kid. You had no place with us.” There is no person this time saying this, only the voice of a man. It feels awfully familiar and somehow it hurts so much. It's feels like a punch in the gut and your are sure to vomit again.

“She is going to throw up again. Help her.”

You feel your restraints loosen and your turn on your side to find a bucket waiting for you. After emptying your stomach's contents you are given water. Someone helps you up and your limbs feel like lead.

“how are you feeling?”

“...tired” your throat feels like you swallowed knives, you voice sounds like it hasn’t been used in ages.

“Come one, Hydra will take care of you, like always.”

“You do remember, don't you? You are a Hydra agent.”

You pause for a second.

“Yes, I remember.”

~

 _“Just one more step. I can do it. This is the day I escape.”_ You stop next to the wall and take a peak around the corner. You turn off the light and feel the urge to faint as the energy reaches your body.  You veins are a scary electrifying blue and the colour now reaches your neck.  You try to hold on to the wall while you drag you limbs to the door. There’s freedom behind that door, you know it. For the past weeks you have been so confused, but there’s something about this place that gives you goose bumps.

“Off so soon? We were just beginning to have fun.” Your heart skips a beat. You look back and there’s only darkness. The voice must hide in the dark you created.  “Oh.. these damn lights. Let’s do something about this, shall we?” One by one the lights start flickering until they spread around a pale light that shows the empty walls the mess that you are.

You fall on your knees trying to attack with the energy you accumulated. You take a look at your hand, trembling and unusually pale and cold. You feel cold. You want to curl up in a ball and be invisible.

“Oh come on.  You must have figured out that we poisoned the electricity. All we need was some ions that would react with the medication we give you. Pick her up. If she’s going to act like this we’ll try something new. Let’s rid her of everything that troubles her.”

Two men drag you down the halls while your eyes bleed. Your sight is fogy, your head feels like it’s going to explode.

 

~Nearly six months later~

“You have two weeks to finish the assignment. There’ll be no extraction team.  No wrong steps now. “ He turned his back on you and you left the jet in the black SUV. You had one mission, kill the Winter Soldier. He betrayed Hydra so he must die.  

You strode through the city feeling the light breeze on your cheeks. You’d feel sad, but you know that is impossible. You can’t feel anything lately. You try to focus on the task at hand, find a safe place to crash while you hunt your target. You have your backpack and a duffel bag, some fake ids and some cash. Also you were given clear orders not to engage if one or more of the avengers are there. You don’t know who these avengers are, but they sound like the bad guys, the dangerous guys that made from the winter soldier, a great agent, a scared cat in the hiding. You are not going to let that happen to you.

You find a cheap motel that didn’t even ask for your name and start unpacking the little things you have. You take out paper and pens, your guns and ammo, making sure everything is where it should, and at the bottom of the bag, hidden inside of the material, there’s a small piece of paper with a simple red star on it. You have no idea why you drew that a couple of month ago, or why you went through all the trouble of painting it with your blood, or at least you think it’s yours.

You found it in your pocket one morning after you got a beating and your “treatment” for the disease no one would tell how it’s called.

“Why doesn’t this make any sense?” you try to crumble it down and throw it, but you can’t make yourself do it. Looking at it makes you feel oddly calm, happy and safe, feeling you don’t remember having before.

You sit down on the floor and with the paper you start drawing the star again, trying to remember why you risked getting the crap beaten out of you for it. After a couple of hours you give up. Your head feels like it’s full of water. Every move you make only amplifies the feeling of drowsiness and you also feel like you can’t really breath. Your eyes start watering and your neck is aching. You brush your cold hands against the hot skin where you always get your injections.

“Why can’t I remember? What is wrong with me?”

Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. You start pushing the paper under the bed until there’s none left while the “room service” waits outside your door. You take the closest gun you have and start closing in to the door. There’s no one you can see on the window, no one when you open the door.

You close back the door and sit on the bed confused.

“Look kid, we’ve been over this. Do you want to go to jail for this? For them? They are not worth it. They abandoned you there. Tell me the names and we can work it out.  We find your parents, you get some community service and you can go back to school.” said a voice out of nowhere.

You look around and there is no one, but the rapid movement makes you even dizzier. You again hear a voice but out of the corner of your eyes you can see movement. You want to reach for the gun next to you but a loud bang makes you jump and suddenly the room is smaller and extremely different. There is a fat police man in front of you and you feel different. You are so confident. You feel small but like there is no worry in the world. You hear your voice telling him to come closer because you are afraid to tell it out loud. And then you punch him with your whole force, jumping over him to the door while he is stunted. The lights in the room are suddenly turned off but you don’t feel like that’s odd.

Suddenly it gets hard to breath and you find yourself on the floor of your motel room. You drag yourself to where your backpack is and rummage through it until you find your kit of injections. You don’t bother to prepare it like you should, you just do it.

You feel the cold liquid through your body reaching your head and your whole body goes numb. The light in the room flicker until they turn off completely. Your eye lids grow heavy and the room is slowly spinning like a carousel.  There’s a tingling sensation in your body, from the tip of your fingers to your heart which beats slowly, calmly.

You don’t know how long you stayed there, frozen on the floor, your body doing what it wanted while your mind was running free. When you get up your face is pale, your hands too and you can see every vein in your palms and down your neck, arms and chest. You pretty much look like an alien with see through skin. You are cold and even after you put some warmer clothes on, you can’t get the sensation of ice cold fingers traveling all over your body. The realization you wasted your day gets to you so you get ready to go back to your mission. For the moment everything you saw is forgotten, the medicine does its job.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

You walk down the streets of NY determined to get to an old building HYDRA told you it used to be a safe house for the people in charge of the soldier. He would show up from time to time to get directions, or when the job was done. He had lots of missions in NY, only a couple of which were ever discovered. He was a good agent.

“ _What got into your head I wonder_ ” you said while looking at the building in front of you.  The sun had already set and that part of the town was almost deserted except some homeless people and some gang punks trying to get attention. You figured this would be labeled as a bad part of the town where parents wouldn’t let children walk alone. You don’t feel anything as you get near the building, a couple of men cat calling you, trying to make you spare them a second look.

 You step on the front steps and you take out from your backpack a gun with a silencer. You have plenty of ammo so you walk confidently through the front door, careful your steps won’t make any noise. You clear each and every bit of the large building room by room, all your attention focused on the task at hand. You payed attention to every sound that could resemble steps, guns, breathing. You didn’t know if the asset was in a fighting shape but you didn’t want to find out the hard way what he could do.

You start walking up the stairs and the faint sound of voices reaches you. Your grip on the gun is now tighter, your breathing is shallow, and your head is pounding. Slowly you get closer to the source of the noises. The voices were speaking a foreign language, but you knew it was Russian somehow. You took out your second identical gun.

_“…that was a mistake…the cop...”_

_“We can’t afford to lose…”_

You cleared the other rooms on that floor and you made your way to the door where the voices now were laughing about something you could bet wasn’t all that funny. You kick down the door and go in, guns blazing. The guys in the room pointed their guns at you too.

“ _Only three”_ you think. _“I could shoot two of them right now, get cover behind the sofa, and kill the third._ ”  You scan their faces. They don’t look especially scared. There’s money everywhere, and a line of coke on a table in front of the ragged sofa in the middle of the room, the back of it towards you. The rest of the room is as empty and destroyed as the rest of the building. Nothing gets your attention. The three guys are right in front of you. Two of them in near the table, a third one in a corner.

“You better get out of here before you regret it. We’re the kind of guys you don’t want to mess with.” he said in a thick accent. One of them looked at you and before he got a chance to say something you spoke:

“Anyone of you scumbags know where the Winter Soldier is? Big guy, long hair, metal arm.” You rolled your eyes when they snickered. “Fine, in this case I might as well kill you and save you from your useless lives. “

“Ain’t you rushing a bit?  After all we are three very good shooters. The gods are not smiling to you today little girl.” His sentence was like a bullet through your already tortured brain.  You shook your head and blink a couple of times trying to focus your vision.

“Does the little girl need anything to feel better? Fellas, I think she just needs a bit of....sugar. We have plenty. We might even share if you give us those pretty looking guns of yours. “

“Maybe something more” another one said as he looked at your body up and down, licking his lips in a disgusting way.

You couldn’t hear him. You knew that whatever happened before was happening again. You needed to get out of this situation and get your shot. You could feel yet again the coldness invade your body. The lights in the room were going crazy much like what happened before at your motel.

“What’s happening?”

“What the… how are you doing this?” one of them screamed.

“Wait, are you that freak our boss had a couple of years ago? Y/n…” he had no time to finish because you went through your plan, killing the two in front of you, sending a bullet through the skull of the third from behind the couch. In a matter of seconds they were all gone.  

You took off your backpack and got a syringe out. Just before the needle pierced your arm the voices began again. There was laughter, happy voices, dozens of people filling the room looking at you with a smile, each talking to you as if they were the only one there. The walls kept changing their aspects, the whole room was spinning. The voices kept getting louder and the people in front of you were like holograms, going over and under the others like ghosts. You kept your back to the sofa, trying your best to move your paralyzed body.  You tried to take your shot of medicine but you failed to move one muscle.

One voice was louder than any now, a blond muscular guy, with big blue eyes, wearing a frown on his otherwise gorgeous face. He was close to you, so close you could feel his hot breath on your face, your lips had a tingling feeling and you were afraid, but it was different, you weren’t afraid for your life.

When he started to move away you felt breathless. The other voices were getting louder, and you tried to ignore them all, even the “ _Hang on, we’ll come get you”_ that seemed somehow different. You struggled to move your arm, holding on to the syringe for your dear life. In a last desperate try, you stuck the needle in your thigh, getting the medicine to enter your body.

Your body relaxes after a couple of minutes, more than what it used to be. Everything hurts. Your chest feels like there’s big rock on it and it limits your breathing. Your body is so cold that your hands turned blue. You don’t know how much time passed since you took the shot. Maybe it’s been and hours, maybe two. You are now surrounded by complete deadly silence. You rub your eyes and you find your cheeks still wet from tears you didn’t even know you shed.

You manage to get up, holding on to everything near you. The room was still slightly spinning, but you felt like throwing up the moment you got up.

“ _This is the biggest hangover and I didn’t even get the fun.”_ You thought as you made your way out of the building.

The road back home took about two hours, because you kept stopping and throwing up every couple of minutes until there was nothing else to throw up and you found yourself in a “good neighborhood” you didn’t know, with normal people everywhere, giving you strange looks, with children running around and laughing, with people threatening you to call the cops even if you didn’t do or say anything.

“You need to leave, you don’t belong here” yelled one woman as she rushed her kids inside.

“How about you call me cab you witch?” you yelled back and continued your way to the motel.

She was right though, it was a place you didn’t belong.

“ _I need to call them, it’s happening again.”_


	11. Chapter 11

“You don’t understand, it keeps me from doing my job. It gives me strange hallucinations, headaches, makes me puke. Whatever I have, it’s getting worse “.  You waited a second for the answer. Your handler wasn’t so keen on coming to your motel.

_“I will send you the address. It’s a secure HYDRA location. We’ll meet there in two days.”_

“You must be crazy. I won’t last two days.  This shit happens more and more.” You took a breath.” Look… after hydra found this medicine, I was told one doze a week. Then I started to feel bad so it was twice a week. I took two in the last two days, double dozes. You get me?”

_“Two days, no sooner. I’ll me you there at 5 am.”_  And with that he close the phone leaving you pissed off.

“Of course. .. that means he’ll want a full report of what I did too. Well I threw up all over the city and got into a fight with three gang members. Great isn’t it? Oh and by the way I see people and I hear voices. How’ve you been? Bloody fucktard. “

You didn’t know where to start with your investigation. Pretty much everything you had in mind was ruled out. He clearly was a lot more than you were let to know. Maybe the other people already got to him. Maybe he managed to leave the country. Or even the city.

_“What if he did leave?”_ You asked yourself while taking a sip of beer. You looked at the file and a map of the world. You put that on the wall and decided to put dots where you’d go if you didn’t want anyone to find you. Surely, a country not so targeted by “the great powers of the world”. Maybe one not fully developed. Something that would remind you of home.

At the thought you felt empty. Home meant nothing to you. You started to look at different countries, data, rumors, whispers, hacking security feeds in airports. And finally you found him, somewhere in eastern Europe, in EU. You lost him there. He didn’t need much to go from one country to another. A fake ID and he was gone in the wind, never to be found.

_“So why am I here? Why are they making me search for him here? Did he come back? Why would he? What is left for him here? Or anywhere for that matter. I just can’t get my head around it. “_

You looked at the file for hours until your eyelids felt heavy. You didn’t want to sleep. You needed to keep busy. Sleeping would only bring those weird people back. You looked in the bag. You only had one more shot of your medicine and that wasn’t enough.

You didn’t risk going out. You ordered a pizza and stayed on your bed until you felt dizzy. You fell asleep and woke up again thousands of times during the night. The next day your eyes were bloodshot and you had huge dark circles under your eyes. You were pale, dizzy, everything was blurry. You stayed in bed, looking at the ceiling while things got worse.

Soon enough, as you expected, the fun started. At first you ignored them, the red headed girl with an attitude and the blond guy who acted like he was stupid. You wondered why out of all people you saw them, and how did life brought people so different together.

As time passed more and more people came and left, some yelled at you, others treated you like a sister, odd people who you were sure you were just imagining, people with metal claws, laser eyes and who could walk through walls. Soon enough the room was full and although you knew they weren’t there, you felt uneasy.

You crawled to your beg and took the last shot.

“ _I was saving this for later but it’ll have to do.”_  

~

There was a loud know on the door, waking you up. You were on the floor, your nose has been  bleeding. You try to wipe the blood while trying  to reach the door.

“Open up.”

“I’m coming, wait.” You opened the door to see the guy from the front desk looking at you pissed off, with a gun in his hand. He is a small boy, not muscular, not older than 18, blond hair in every direction, dirty old clothes, smelling like cigars and alcohol. He sizes you up and down, looks at your face, thinking that you are just a junkie, but then again, he’s not here because of that.

“If you could stop fucking with the light it’d be great. I had to change the fuses three times since you are here. Also I’ll charge you more if you keep using so much power.”

“Look man, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” You point at his gun. “Now put that away before you hurt yourself. I’ll check out in a couple of days.” You wanted to close the door but he put his foot in the way, giving you a disgusting grin.

“Or maybe you can save some power by keeping the light out all night long, you get me?”  you felt nauseous and tried to close the door. He pushed the door and it got open even more.

“Leave now, and I won’t hurt you.”

“You? Hurt me? You forget who has the gun.” He lifts the gun for you to see it again. You felt like laughing until he started to push the door again, taking you by surprise. You made a step back so the door wouldn’t hit you in the face, but there he was, in the doorway, smiling like a mad man. If you could only reach one of your guns. He looks left and right and sees the arsenal in your room, gulps but keeps stepping forward.

“I said leave.” Your voice sounded strange.  He looked at you and started to scream, leaving you alone in your room, with the door open.

“Be out by tomorrow or I’m calling the cops.”

“Whatever.” You closed the door and started to pack. You forgot all about how weird your voices sounded until you went to take a shower and got a glimpse of you in the mirror. Besides the fact that all your veins were swollen and blue and terribly obvious, your eyes were a glowing in a strange way. You were glowing a blue light.

“What the …” you stopped and put your hands over your mouth scared. Your voice sounded like you were talking in front of fan, like children do. “I’m going crazy. I’m turning in a robot. Oh my…” at this point you were starting to get panicked. At first there were simple hallucinations, then the feeling of sickness, now this. You are sure you are going crazy. You touch your face with a trembling hand. 

You turn on the water and stand in the cold water, scrubbing your hands until you feel  like there’s no skin left, hoping it’ll go away. You get dressed quickly and take your things. You look one more time in the mirror and put a hoodie on and shut down the lights. Suddenly a tingling sensation fills your arm, from the tip of the fingers to the shoulder. All of the light bulbs explode.

You run out the room without looking back.

You wondered all night, trying to hide your face, standing in dark alleys, hidden from anyone until you got the message for the meeting. Then you headed straight to the place. You had a feeling you knew it.

~

There you were, in a bank vault, sitting on the floor next to all the trash that’s been lying there for what looks like months. You are on edge, you don’t like this place, you keep your hands on the guns, trying to keep yourself calm. Out of all places you know, this is the worst. It’s like there’s death and fear in the air, you feel it every time you breath. And it’s so hard to breath. You feel like there’s a nod in your throat every time you look at equipment in the room, especially the chair in the middle of the room. You turn your head and see a shadow.

“Here you are. I’ve been waiting all night. I need that shit right now. “ you say.

“Oh you’ll get it.” You stand up and realize that there is more than one person there, and they are not with Hydra.

“What’s this about?” you say calmly, hiding your guns behind your back.  No one answers but they keep coming in until the room is packed with thugs, holding guns and looking at you in a threatening way, there must have been at least 15 of them.

You know there is no way you can beat them, so you look at them confident. You decided you might as well give them a hard time before they release you from this hell.

You bring your hands to the side of your body. At the sight of the guns everyone puts their gun up and aims it at you. You would cry if you didn’t think death was a good thing now. There were times when the pain was so bad, when the guards would hit you so hard when you thought it would be a blessing.

You try to think what you could do, you had no more than five seconds. Someone was talking in the background, something about you killing their brothers, their leaders, but while you were looking them straight in the eyes, you didn’t pay attention to a single word.

And then it came, a rain of bullets. You put your hands instinctively in front of your face, as if that would do any good.  

When the sounds stopped you expected to be a bleeding mess on the ground, but you were very much alive, surrounded by bullets that looked as if they hit a wall. You looked surprised in the room to find everyone on the floor, struggling to breathe until each one of them dies with a look of horror on their faces. Every piece of electronic equipment sparks, small flames burning at the electric sockets.

“ _What on earth_?” you try to step forward but you fall, your legs not able to hold you.

“ _Blood again from my nose, again with the blue skin._ “ your heart beats really fast and your breath is shallow. You try to leave the room as fast as you can. Sure no one will come to save you and you can’t wait for the next round of whatever this was.

You run on the street, people giving you strange looks and some even crossing the street at the sight of you.

From time to time you stop and try to steady yourself by holding on to buildings. You end up in an alley far from the place you left. You crash on the ground. You try to lean on one of the walls, your head making contact with the cold brick. Your eyes wonder left and right until you manage to see through foggy eyes a poster of what they call “The avengers.” You scan each and every one, and by the time you reach to the one in the middle your head hurts like a bitch, and you are sure you’re crying. Then there it is, the sudden realization, you’ve seen them before. You try to stand up and get closer to the piece of paper. You look in the eyes of a blond guy in the middle. You could swear he’s looking straight into your soul.

“Steve…?” the word slips out like your tongue had its own mind. Somehow it felt right to say it. It was like a sweet memory.

_“I can’t go back. I can’t…”_ the foreign words rolled of your tongue with ease. You knew them, but you didn’t. You stared at the picture while lots of questions filled your mind.

“I need to find out who I am.” You said in a broken voice. You folded the poster and put it in your pocket. You continued to walk and somehow you thought you knew where.

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't going to update but i was too excited to post this chapter. i hope you all like it and i would love to hear your thoughts :D thanks for all the support :D

Steve POV

Bucky wasn’t going to come easy, I knew it.  But at the same time he didn’t look like he was resisting either. Maybe he was tired of running from us. I know we were. It felt like a dream when he agreed to come with us.

“Steve, promise me I won’t hurt anyone.” I looked at my him and I saw my friend, hurt, tired and destroyed.

“Yeah buddy. It’ll be ok. Everything will be fine. Tony and I made sure if it.” His eyes shifted to the ground and I understood.  We freed his arm from the strange metal contraption and got him on the quinjet.

~

I went down the hall to the elevator doors. While the conflicts in the tower seemed to disappear there was a new problem. Once we got Bucky to the safety of the tower we had to prepare for the agents that will come “rescue” him. Hydra could never leave such an asset alive and rogue. He had to be terminated or put under control and we didn’t know which one they were going for now. And it scared us all.  And there are his nightmares and sudden bursts that he can’t control the loss of memory, the paranoia. Stark suggested we bring in a psychologist to deal with them, since none of us knew how to help him in any way.

_“There’s no way he’ll talk to anyone about what’s bothering him. He won’t even tell me.”_

_“Trust me, he’ll tell her. She’s the best person an agent can find, SHIELD approved, and since the fall she’s done nothing but help agents that had their life destroyed by HYDRA. Now, if you excuse me, I have to make a call to her current boss and let him know she doesn’t work for him anymore.”_

_“I don’t trust her Tony. You’ve seen what a couple of words can do to him. Who says she wasn’t bought or maybe…”_

_“Steve, relax. I trust her. She helped me through some rough times after New York. Hill says she’s clean. “Tony started to walk away as I screamed “He won’t talk to her_.”

Jarvis startled me as his voice announced me that someone was requesting permission to enter the tower. 

“I’ll be right there. Thanks.”

I was not allowed to read through the doctor’s file because that’s an “invasion of privacy Rogers” as Natasha so nicely said, but she approves of her, so I guess it’ll be fine.

“Hi, are you doctor Wren?”

“Hi, yes. My name is Jenny Wren. I talked to Mr. Stark, I don’t know if you are aware of …”

“I know. Please come. Should I help you with your luggage? I am Steve Rogers by the way. “ I smiled at the woman in front of me. She was a young short woman, with curly hair and a bright smile, but with the fiery eyes of a fighter. She looked frail and small, but she was a SHIELD agent so I know that’s not the case. Her voice was warm and calm and she gave out a peaceful and trustful vibe. I took her bags and walked with her in silence to the floor she was assigned a room. It was only a floor above me and Bucky.

“So.. is Jenny Wren your real name?” She laughed. I realized that might have been rude and looked down.

“Sort of, but when working with SHIELD agents and so on, you sometimes need to keep a part of your life private. Look Mr. Rogers, I know you don’t trust me, I can see it very well. And I guess you don’t want to let me anywhere your close friend, but I assure you, I mean no harm.”

“I am sorry mam. I’m acting rude. I shouldn’t have.. “

“Call me Jenny and it’s fine.” She smiled up at me and the elevator stopped. Stark was in the hallway. She waved at me and left me in the elevator. I went down to my floor to meet Bucky, but he was in his room, locked away as he had yet another sudden burst of anger. He sometimes got quite violent and it was all HYDRA protocol that remained in his head. He tries so hard to get over it, but it just kept coming back and he won’t tell anyone a thing about it.

“Maybe Stark had a point…” even if I found it unbelievable that Bucky would say what’s been bothering him to a complete stranger.

~

Your POV

You woke from the cold. Your hands are frozen and you can barely move them. They turned a shade of blue. Your whole back is stuck in a weird position as you slept on the bench. Every muscle in your body protests as you try to get up, your vision blurry. You saw black for a couple of seconds, falling on your knees, holding your upper body of the ground by putting the hands on the bench and dragging yourself on it. You breathe slowly and try to focus your vision on the surroundings.

You are in a nice park, sitting a bench that apparently you slept on, but you have no idea how you got there. The place seems somewhat familiar but you shake that feeling off as soon as you hear your stomach grumble, asking for food. You don’t remember the last time you ate, or drank anything. Your lips are dry and you have a metallic taste in your mouth.

Again you try to get up and fail. Your body is in an awful shape. You see the dried blood on your hands and legs and you think it’s just from falling over and over again, but you can’t remember for sure. You have vomit on your shoes; that you do remember. It was after you were attacked in the …safe. You put a hand to your nose and as expected you feel the dried blood, even on your chin and neck. You check to see if you still have your backpack.

You have there a change of clothes, your guns, some ammo, some cash, a fake id and a broken vile of “medicine”. Your blood boils at the thought of it. You now know it’s more like poison. You now know that Hydra was lying to you, they were the bad guys.

“… the bad guys. This shit only made me sick.” You say to no one and throw it in the garbage bin next to the bench you are on. you go to the water fountain on shaky legs and wash your face until you feel satisfied. You then grab everything you have and go into a dark alley where you change your clothes. You put a beanie on and started to walk again, to the nearest shop to get what you needed.

You could hear some police sirens in the background as you exited the shop, a sandwich in your mouth. You went to the crowd of people that stayed behind a barrier and looked at the scene. It was nothing more than a car accident, no one seemed to be hurt. You want to leave when you hear the voices of two nearby officers.

_“They finally bought those devices that scan someone’s finger and then show you who it is. It’s so much more efficient and faster than the old system.” one of them said._

_“Where do they keep ‘em?”_

_“They’re only for the corners. If you ain’t working with the dead, you won’t work with ‘em. At least they give you the name on site.”_

You walk on and give this a thought. Maybe if you can’t remember who you are, they could tell you. There’s no need to search for the people on the posters just to find that you only knew them because they’re famous. You gave this a thought. You knew for sure you had a record. They sure have your prints in the system. All you had to do is get arrested.

“This isn’t going to be hard.” You smiled. You actually thought this to be fun.

You entered a shop, pulled out your guns and yelled out loud:

“Nobody moves or I kill you all. I don’t need your money. “ they all screamed in fear. You turn your head to a woman in the corner. You pointed to her. “You over there. Get your phone out, call the cops, tell them what’s happening, tell them I am armed and dangerous and that I have a desire to kill you all. NOW!” and then you sat on the counter and waited to hear the sirens, while smiling, playing with your guns. You had no intention to kill anyone, it was just an act, and it was fun to fool them all.

When they got there you sent everyone outside, put your guns down and waited for them to come arrest you. They entered the little shop screaming at you and pushed you roughly to the ground, cuffing your hands behind your back, taking your guns and backpack from you. You grinned on the inside as they took you to the station.

They pushed you in a cell next to other inmates that looked as bad as you did this morning. You stayed down on the floor and waited.

The wait was longer than what you thought. Soon you were bored and you could feel everyone’s eyes on you. You started to play with the laces from your shoes. You cracked your knuckles. You eventually gave up and looked up at the light bulb on the ceiling, your head leaned on the metal bench in the small cell. you wondered if there was any way to shut it down so you can get some sleep, any way to drain it of power so it’ll stop working.  You relaxed and felt a wave of coldness passing through your veins as the bulb flickered and stopped working for about half a minute and then went back to spread a shitty pale light. You froze looking at it. You thought you imagined it. You shifted in your place, looking with big eyes at the light bulb. You thought about shutting it down again, but it stayed the same. you still looked with big eyes at the ceiling.

“How stoned are you, kid?” someone on the other side of the bars asked.

“The lights stopped for a while, didn’t they?” you looked at him as if waiting for the confirmation you are not crazy.

“So what? It’s an old building. It’s an old installation, these things happen. You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” he asked in a mock tone, quirking an eyebrow at you. He looked down at you as if he felt he was truly superior to such a criminal as you. You only then noticed he must have been a detective. He wore a brown suit with a blue shirt, he had the badge on his belt of the trousers, his hair a mess of white hairs and brown locks. He swallowed a sip of a coffee he held in his hand and put a hand on his big belly.

“I’ll be back for you after lunch, Miss Zacks.” You gave him a questioning look. “That is your name. Jane Zacks, isn’t it? You id said so.” You laughed.

“It’s fake.” You turned your eyes to the light source again. “See you after lunch detective.” He hummed and started to yell at someone in the station. You knew it wasn’t going to take much longer.

You wondered as you looked at the light how could you make all these decisions so easily, as if they were “what should I wear today”. You shook you head. You’ll find soon enough who you are and you can go from there, find people from your past, find yourself. Now, you try to drain the energy out of the bulb again.

You close your eyes as a tingling sensation starts in your hands, a hot and cold sensation. You open your eyes to see that not only that light went out, but the one next to it too.

“ _That so? What if I wanted something more to go out. Who could I maybe…”_ You turned your attention to a laptop nearby. Out of reflex your hand turned to the direction of the computer, you fingers moving on their own accord. The laptop shut down, while the person working on it sighed in frustration.

“ _I could’ve sworn it had a full battery. I only opened it a few minutes ago. Where’s the damn charger.”_  

You laughed and covered your mouth. This was amazing. Were you always able to do this? Is this all you can do? You mind went back to the motel room and to all the inexplicable events and everything started to make more sense. Than the flashback in the precinct, when the lights stopped and it felt natural, it felt good.

“Did Hydra know…is this why…” you put a hand where you used to get your injections. A cold shiver ran down your spine.

The cell door opened.

“Let’s have a chat” said the detective from earlier, only this time more serious than before, and surrounded by a 3 other units. You smiled and looked him in the eye as you stood up, you presence as menacing as a lion about to attack. He could see the fire in your eyes and he silently wished he hadn’t picked up this case.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this the Christmas miracle? No, it's just the winter vacation because the rest of the year i am a sad little nerd that wants to pass her exams and get to uni. But no more of that, here is the chapter i managed to write. As always i would love to hear what you think because it keeps me motivated to write :D

You stared at the one way mirror and wondered who could be behind it. Did they call in the FBI? Maybe CIA? Were they going to lock you in a prison without even bothering to check who you are? Thoughts swarmed through your mind but you knew you had to keep your cool in front of them. You knew somehow that you can’t show anything on your face. You knew all these things and had already a strategy for being in an interrogation room and yet somehow it wasn’t that strange.

You put your feet up on the table, gave your cuffs a look and then break them open without a sweat while keeping the appearance that you are under their control. You tried to mess with whatever electrical equipment they had in the other room, shutting it down, making it open by itself and so on, trying to figure out just how much of a control you have and what’s the range of your powers.

So far you gathered that you could absorb electricity and mess with pretty much anything that had a plug, open it or shutting it down. You hadn’t really tried to see if that worked on phones or if you could fry something, or if you could electrocute anyone just by touch…or even without touching them.

“What can I do?” you say in a voice just about a whisper and looked at your hands. You looked in the mirror and saw you were kind of pale and you had huge dark circles under your eyes. You stop messing with electricity. Your eyes then went to the door as you heard the handle of the door.

“So Miss whatever your name is” he said as he sat down in the chair in front of me. “How about we start with the basics?  First get your feet of the table; you’re not in a bar. “

“Gee, you sound like a dad. “ you say as you put your feet down , turning to face him properly.

“Would you know that? What was your dad’s name?”

“I don’t know, I can’t remember. “

“So you weren’t all that close huh. No surprise here. What about your name? And I would like the real one here.” He placed his hands on the table and gave you what you thought was a ridiculous look, but he acted as if he was intimidating. You shrugged.

“I don’t know. Isn’t that your job? Find out who I am and why I did what I did and so on. And when you got all that figured out I’m here to confirm or not. Can you get me a coffee? I am so tired, I feel like I haven’t slept properly in about …six months.” The words slipped out of your mouth and you frowned slightly, but tried to plat it off as nothing.

“Ok, how about the guns you had?”

“Have. They are still mine, I hope you treat them right.” you smirked and you could clearly see that the man in front of you was getting annoyed.

“Where did you get those? They aren’t registered and we cannot trace them to any known organization, legal or not. Maybe you can tell me why did you wanted to get arrested? Why make the woman call the police? Why did you do no damage even if you had an arsenal at your disposal? Who do you work for?”

“Jesus, easy on all of those questions. Which one should I answer first?” you laughed but the smile soon faded as you heard another voice in the room, although faded, as if it was a whisper.

_“How did you know where to find us? Who are you working for? Why are you here? How did you know we were hiding? Why did you help us?”_  you are stunned for a second, looking around then you yell.

“SHUT UP!” the man in front of you looks up from the file at you, quirking an eyebrow with the hint of a smile on his face.

“I didn’t say anything.”

_“How did you know where to find us? Who are you working for? Why are you here? How did you know we were hiding? Why did you help us?”_  

_“Easy there. I can only answer one at a time.”_ You said in an equally low voice, your voice trembling. 

“Again, I didn’t say anything. Maybe you should get a psych evaluation while we’re at it. It’s enough for now. You’ll stay here until some uniforms will pick you up to get your prints and DNA. “ he left with no other words and you were left stunned in the little room.

~

You were still in the small room, sipping on a cup of terrible coffee, the remains of a sandwich in front of you. You were waiting for the results and at the same time making a plan to escape this place before their search could bring any unwanted guests, like Hydra.

Two men entered this time and then the fat detective closed the door after himself. The three of them were looking at you and one of them had a hand on his gun. They were all tense. A tall brunet handsome looking guy stood on the chair in front of you. He tried to relax as too seem unimpressed by you, but he failed. You could practically see him sweating. You could smell the fear on them.

He put a small file in front of you and opened it as to check the facts one more time, in case he misread the information.

“So… your prints lead to nowhere in our system, in the FBI data base, or CIA, or Interpol, or basically any data base we would get our hands one.  Well, almost. See, the files from SHIELD were all over the internet and that means of course that every agent and criminal known to them is now known to us.  It took us a while and a lot of favours but we finally managed to get a match on your prints. Wanna know what we found?” he said, turning the file for you to see. You wanted to jump and look at it, but you threw your eyes nonchalantly and only saw a completely redacted file, black rows upon black rows of nothing, topped with the red mark of deceased, there wasn’t even a damn name.  You looked at the men in front of you and saw how your presence might make them anxious.

You leaned back in your chair, put your feet up and looked at the detective.

“I guess there’s nothing for me to do here, I cannot confirm or deny this because I don’t know what this is. As you can see, I am very much alive.” You paused, and then slammed your hands on the metal table making a deafening noise in the room. “Or am I?” and then started laughing.

The other started to yell at you all kind of profanities and then left, slamming the door behind them. You smiled and took a sip of your coffee.

~

It has been hours since anyone checked on you, you were bored out of your mind in that room that you kind of just gathered the chairs and tried to fall asleep.  

_“I’m still alive, I’m still alive, I’m still alive, I’m still alive….or am I?”_

_“Stay with us, come on, come on, look at me, can you speak? What is your name?” someone  yelled in your ear while someone else put their hand through your chest. Your eyeballs were feeling like they were burning so you shut them tight while what felt like acid tears rand down the sides of your face, you were laying on the ground._

_Your hands gripped the grass beneath but there was a shoe there, a person screaming to take that out of the vicinity, take everything away._

_“Come on, bub, get a grip on it.”_

_“It hurts so much and  I can’t find it the damn thing….”a cry of pain from that same person, a girl, didn’t sound old, maybe even a teen. The other voice was rough, a different one than the first. How many people were there you didn’t know, but they all seemed in immense hurry, pain and panic._

_Then nothing, completely darkness, no noise, no panic, not even your own heartbeat, you felt like nothing, you felt dead._

_“Stay with us…”_

 You fell on the floor in the dark room, your eyes seemed to light everything you looked at, your heartbeat was so fast you thought your heart was going to jump out, your head filled with those voices, screams and gunshot noises, you screamed in pain and felt the blood dripping from your chin on the floor, you begged them to stop. When the door opened you ran out, knocking over the agents who came to make sure you are fine, ran and avoided every single cop in your way. They were thrown out of your way and could not get close, as if you were protected by a bubble. Keeping your hands over your ears, trying to block out the noise you searched for a  window, and then you jumped, nothing in mind but escaping these voices, the cries of help, the pain inside your whole body that spread like a poison. You didn't think for a second how high you were. You landed hard but you got up and kept running, you ran through alleys you didn’t know, stopped at the sight of police cars and hid in dumpsters and sewers, all while the voices kept getting louder, the bleeding worse. And you ran, you ran all evening and night, the adrenaline rush getting you through the door of an empty abandoned apartment, moldy and probably full of rats, graffiti and junk from previous “guests”. You crashed in the middle of a room and then tried to make you way to a corner. You knew you didn’t have long. In the state you were you felt like 10 hours was at best what you had left of your life, a life you didn’t even know you lived.

You didn’t feel like crying, so you just stood there, hearing the voices as they talked to you, yelled at you, looking at scenes of destruction in front of you, at kills upon kills and torture. You wanted someone’s help, you wanted to yell to someone to help you.


End file.
